


the Rock

by irrelevant



Category: One Piece
Genre: Action, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Except When They Do, Logia, M/M, Marines And Pirates Don't Mix, Seastone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-21
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>canon-based AU.  I don't know how to summarize this.  I'm too close to it, I think.  let's say it's about me wanting Ace to live and leave it at that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. days 01, 03, 06

**Author's Note:**

> many, many thanks to Q for her editing and beta work. without her this would suck a lot more than it does.
> 
> three years later. I really know how to procrastinate. this is AU now, of course, although I've revised and edited the previous parts to work better with canon. also, this part is not the last. I'm not sure yet how long it _is_ going to be and I don't know if it will ever be more than gen and UST. mostly, the Rock is about me needing Ace to still be alive. everything else is negotiable.

This is your do not get out of jail free card. Do not pass Go. Do not collect B200.

 

 **day 01**   
_How do I always manage to get myself into this kind of shit?_

It's a good question. He's just not sure it’s the right question, not for someone up to their neck in his present situation. This isn’t your average shit creek without paddle situation. This is something special, and Ace guesses he’s qualified to say so. He’s an expert at causing as well as getting out of the former, but the latter... it's enough to say that this type of special is, if not far gone from what he’s used to then off in a different direction. And he's been in some pretty tight places before, which is putting it mildly.

He can't see how to work this one from where he’s sitting, though. More precisely, lying. On his back. Seastone cuffed to a berth.

A marine berth, moreover, in a marine cabin, fully equipped with accompanying marine. And this marine is an entire crew all by himself.

Two crews, possibly more. So, given the particulars of the situation, the question Ace feels he should be asking himself is, how did I get myself _out_ of this kind of shit last time?

“If I didn't know better,” says Smoker, otherwise known as two crews of marine, “I’d say you preferred your old accommodations. Maybe I should toss you back in that cell I pulled you out of.”

Ace’s body feels like it’s been beat six ways to Sunday, buried for three days, then dug up and the whole process repeated, but he gives indifference his best shot. “Up to you, Captain. This is your party.”

No, something wrong there. Not captain. Commodore. That’s what the little girl with the big sword called him, and Ace expects she’d know, what with her being Smoker’s second. It’s been almost a year since Alabasta. Promotions happen. Along with a lot of other things.

Things like failure. Capture.

Things like prison.

And sometimes, things like reprieves that arrive when you think you’re deep-sixed for sure, and from a direction you’d never have expected them to come. A rundown town in Alabasta was the first and last time he went up against the White Hunter. Ace had hoped it would stay the last, but if it comes down to an execution platform or Smoker, he'll go with Smoker for the time being, not that he has a choice.

It’s like Thatch used to say—put your wishes in one hand, piss in the other, and see which one fills up faster. He doesn’t need a handful of hot yellow to know he’s hanging off the last branch of a dead tree sitting on a cliff edge overlooking the ocean. It doesn’t help that the branch is also the shit end of his stick.

Smoker’s chair creaks under shifting weight. “You feeling all right, Portgas? Cooperation is the last thing I’d expect from you.”

“One fight doesn’t make you an expert,” Ace says, not looking away from the rough join of planks above him. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough. I know your captain had a week to get you out of holding when they moved you. He didn’t lift a finger.”

Once, Ace would have ripped him a new one for the implied insult, but seastone has a way of wearing the fight out of a person. Nothing he could say would change Smoker's mind about pirates in general or Pops in particular, so he stays silent, staring up at the deckhead. And maybe it's the seastone making him slow and maybe it's determined inattention, but it takes him a few seconds to register the sudden burst of sound as laughter.

Surprised, he turns towards Smoker; laughter is as out of place in him as cooperation is in Ace. As it is, it doesn’t last long, barely long enough to change Smoker’s expression. But it changes Ace’s perception of him. How, exactly, is something Ace can't put a finger on. He only knows that it does.

“You’ve changed,” Smoker says, an odd parallel echo of Ace’s thoughts.

Ace shrugs. “Prison will do that.”

“Are you telling me you don’t care that the son of a bitch you've got carved into your back left you to rot?”

It's not a question he wants to think about or answer, mostly because he’s stupid with exhaustion and not thinking straight. He knows that’s partly the seastone, but right now he just wishes Smoker would shut up and go away. That he has to force himself to meet Smoker’s eyes is like taking a punch on a bone deep bruise.

“Do you want me to care?” he asks. “That’s weird for a marine. Why should you give a shit about what one pirate does to another pirate? Aren’t you the guy who’d just as soon let us all kill each other and get it over with?”

Creak of the ship, scrape of wood on wood and Smoker is out from behind his desk and across the room, looming over Ace. Pissed off doesn't begin to describe his expression.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on out there, boy? You’ve been chasing Teach so long you’ve forgotten to pay attention to anything else.”

Maybe. Ace still doesn’t have to, won't take this from anyone but Whitebeard. “What is it I’m supposed to know?” he snarls back. “I don't know if _you’ve_ forgotten, but I’ve been in lockdown for a month.”

They glare at each other, each of them knowing the other is right. Neither of them willing to admit it.

Smoker jerks a pair of cigars from his coat loops. He lights up; Ace can only see the outline of him but he can smell smoldering tobacco. Can feel Smoker's focused attention. “Ignorance will get you killed anywhere,” Smoker says, blowing a stream of blue-white smoke out to envelop Ace. “Grand Line just does it ten times faster.”

“No kidding,” Ace drawls, then coughs, waving the smoke away. It never used to bother him before, but... before is the right word for it. He sits up as far as his too-short chain will allow, leans his head against the bulkhead. “You don't,” he starts to say, then stops. Thinks. Knows Smoker is waiting, not moving, smoke from his cigars curling through the cabin’s still air.

Ace looks down at himself. His skin is too white, almost as white as Smoker’s. He’s been sick and away from the sun’s heat and his own fire for a month too long, and damn it, Teach _beat him_.

Beat him, Fire Fist Ace, Whitebeard’s second commander.

Has the old man filled his old command yet? Under the circumstances, he’d have had to. And as much as he wants to push it away, deny what he's feeling, the thought hurts. Hurts even more because it was a marine and not his shipmates who got Ace away from the promise of an execution platform, even though he wouldn't have wanted them to in the first place.

The dumbest thing they could've done was go after him. Most of him spent the last month scared shitless they would come. The tiny fraction leftover was equally scared they wouldn't. Now--

He doesn't know anymore what he wants. It's all mixed up with seastone and fear and the fire he can't feel. He's tired of being afraid. Sometimes he feels like he's spent most of his life being afraid. Not for himself. For what's his.

Pops has his reasons for what he does, Ace knows. Most of the time they're the same as Ace's. But this situation is of Ace's own making; it's his own fault and he'll pay his way, however it comes due, and that's truth. It's his way. And his brain knows all of that, but his brain and his gut aren't always on speaking terms. And no amount of fact and reason can change the hard core of hurt living in the place where his fire used to.

If he isn’t Whitebeard’s, he’s not sure who or what he is. Doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. But—he raises his head and looks at Smoker—this marine wants something from him. Wants him _for_ something, if Ace is reading Smoker right.

“Why’d you do it? Why do you need me alive?”

Smoker pulls the cigars from his mouth, flicks accumulated ash away. “Whitebeard, Red Hair and Straw Hat. Aside from the obvious, their common denominator is you.”

“I don’t—”

“I know you don’t,” Smoker cuts his confusion off at the head. “Shanks and Newgate are at each other’s throats. We’re looking at a war between pirate Emperors with the Shichibukai thrown in for good measure, and your brother,” Smoker points his cigars at Ace, “is sitting right in the middle of it.”

Ace laughs, a short bark of sound without humor. “That’s Luffy. He doesn’t do it on purpose, it just happens. Anyway, anything that gets between him and One Piece is going to be _in_ pieces.”

“So I’ve been told,” Smoker says dryly, and Ace laughs again and maybe this time it feels like there’s a little more of him in it.

“There are some people who change the shape of the world just by being alive. Roger was one, Dragon’s another. From what I’ve seen, so is Straw Hat Luffy. Goddamn forces of nature.” Smoker looks back down at Ace, his eyes narrowed. “You’re related to at least one of them. Maybe more.”

Ace thinks he may have just seen the light. He pushes his hair back from his face—even before Impel Down it needed cutting. “I guess I could see your point if you were after information,” he says, “but if you’re looking to use me as some kind of bargaining chip you’re screwed. The old man’s got a ton of men and ships, and Luffy has his own stuff to deal with. Shanks? I ran up against him a few times when I was still knocking around the Line, but I haven’t seen him since a year before Banaro.”

“There’s a rumor that the fallout between your captain and Red Hair had something to do with you.”

It doesn't make sense. Shanks isn't... he wouldn't... but there's Smoker. He's a lot of things, but a liar isn't one of them. Ace stares blankly at him, halfway to believing. “You’re serious.”

“Yes,” Smoker smiles grimly, “and if it’s true, you’re worth more to me alive than dead. For now.”

So this is it. This is where his luck finally runs out. He’d thought it had left him somewhere around Blackbeard and Impel Down. Live and learn.

“You’ll stay in here for now. I’d put you in the brig, but I don’t have room.” Smoker’s mouth twists in disgust. “Pirates. You don't learn, do you?”

“You should be thankful. If we did, you’d be out of a job.” He doesn’t know how he manages, but somehow Ace dredges a grin up from somewhere. From the look on Smoker’s face, it must be pretty bad. Whatever. It’s a start.

“You've still got the mouth, anyway,” Smoker says. He’s at the door, reaching for then sliding his jitte into its loop. He pauses in the doorway and looks back at Ace. “I’ll send someone with food later. Try not to drown in it.”

The port closes on Smoker’s sarcasm. Ace abruptly bends over, his arms draped over his legs, his head hanging down between his knees. He swallows convulsively, repeatedly. He feels like he’s going to puke, which is nothing new; just one of the side effects of seastone. He doesn’t think it’s that, though, not this time. He’s had seastone sickness for a little over a month. By now he knows the difference between deprivation nausea and the bile sour taste of defeat.

 

 **day 03**  
They’ve lengthened his leash. He figures his watchdogs got tired of having to unchain him every time he needed the head. Or maybe Smoker’s decided to give him just enough chain to hang himself with.

It’d be easy to do—this is the good stuff. The links are small and lightweight, but stronger than steel and harder than diamond. And every one is embedded with tiny seastone chips.

“Isn’t that overkill?” he’d joked to Smoker’s second in command (Tashigi?) while two seamen had switched the chain lengths. “The cuffs and collar are definitely working,” he’d added, then immediately felt bad for speaking up when the girl gave him an apologetic look.

“I'm sorry, Portgas-san. We—we don’t have any other kind.”

Ace had laughed a little. “Guess your commodore’s the cautious type. Or maybe he’s just got a kinked-out bondage fetish.”

Tashigi—if that’s her actual name—had turned a very pretty pink, stuttered something unintelligible, and rushed out, almost tripping over her sword in the process and leaving Ace to the not so tender mercies of the seamen.

Awkwardness aside, he's sorrier for upsetting Tashigi than for the words themselves. It isn’t often he makes a girl stammer and blush without intending to, which in this case he hadn’t. He was just trying to get up a conversation with the only semi-normal person on this ship who’s willing to talk to him. After a month of solitary he’s desperate for human interaction, and he’s spent the last week being pointedly ignored by Smoker’s crew.

He has a feeling the silence isn’t wholly by choice—he’s betting on Smoker’s influence there. He probably warned his marines away from the evil pirate, which leaves Ace with a limited amount of conversational candidates. If he discounts the mute seamen who bring him his meals, he has a choice between Tashigi and Smoker, and as far as Ace is concerned, Smoker doesn’t count. Normal human interaction isn’t part of the guy’s equation, and anyway, he’s never around to interact with. This cabin they’ve got Ace chained to is Smoker’s, but in three days Ace has seen Smoker twice—the morning of that first day and again yesterday afternoon.

He’d been half asleep -- with all the seastone accessories he’s wearing it’s hard to be anything else -- sprawled across the deck in a small patch of sunlight. He’d heard the impatient tramp of boots coming his way, then the door had opened and Smoker was glaring at him.

“The hell are you doing down there?”

“What’s it look like?” Ace mumbled. He hadn’t bothered to move, just stared blearily up at Smoker, thinking that the guy didn’t look half so intimidating when he was upside down.

Smoker had looked from Ace in his sunlight to the cabin’s three small portholes, then back again. His glare had intensified, and for a second Ace thought he was going to get white-snaked through one of those portholes.

Ace blinked. The muscles in Smoker’s jaw flickered. Gloved hands clenched and unclenched, Smoker took a step forward and… nothing. No snarling, pissed off marine commodores, and no animate smoke. Just nothing.

Turning his back on Ace, Smoker had stomped out, leaving a cloud of cigar smoke and the echo of a slammed door behind him. Since then Ace has seen neither hide nor hair of him. He wonders how Smoker manages clean clothes. Maybe he has his minions raid his locker while Ace is asleep.

Maybe that’s his only pair of jeans.

It’s not, though. As soon as Ace got his shiny new mobility, he checked. He’s been over the lockers and desk several times; didn’t see anything he could use to get his cuffs off, but he did find a drawer full of cigars, a pile of unopened communications from marine headquarters, and ten identical pair of jeans. Oh and, no underwear. Apparently Smoker is a commando kind of guy, which fits in a way. He's surprisingly anti-authority for a high ranked naval officer. If he wasn’t, Ace would be rotting on top of a government execution platform, not dozing on the sunny deck of Smoker’s cabin.

He turns his head, resting his cheek against warm wood, and lifts a hand. Splays his fingers out so the sun’s rays stream through them, lighting white skin to an orangey red that stirs the constant ache inside him. The center of him—the place his fire used to fill—is hollowed out. Frozen.

Crippled.

Interfering marine. Should’ve let the platform take him. Ace drops his hand. Metal clinks, chain links sliding through his fingers in a seductive, slick-cold stream. Easy, oh yeah it would be.

A shout from somewhere overhead breaks through the seastone haze clouding Ace’s brain. He drops the chain as though it's burning him, accomplishing what no fire has for three years, and scrambles backwards until he’s up against the bulkhead. He leans into it, panting, cold sweat breaking out all over his body. Stares at the chains coiling across the deck towards him.

 _No…that…_ The cabin door bangs open. Ace jerks his head up, turning blindly toward the hatchway and the man coming through it.

Smoker crosses the room to stand over Ace and Ace looks up into his expressionless face, wondering who or what it is Smoker sees hunkered on the deck in a tangle of chained flesh and stinking fear. Is Ace just another pirate in an endless line of them—one more obstacle to Smoker’s justice? A means to an end Ace can’t see? Maybe a pawn in a game so huge Ace can’t begin to understand the moves.

All of the above. None of them. Smoker leans down, wraps a hand around Ace’s arm. “Come on, kid. Get up.”

He hates that he needs Smoker’s help to stand, hates the rough support of his gloved hand. “You make some space for me in your brig? Must suck having me in here.”

“Shut your mouth and move your ass.”

His first step is a stumble; Smoker is all that keeps him from landing back on his ass. “What’s so important that you have to drag me along for the ride?” he snaps, covering embarrassment with anger.

Smoker grunts, “Nothing’s that important,” and shoves Ace towards the berth. “Do you want to get some air or not? If you do, I need to take the chains off. If you don’t, say so. I have better things to do with my time.”

The berth gives beneath Ace’s weight. Getting a hand underneath himself, he twists awkwardly up from his sprawl and holds out his wrists.

\--

It’s near sunset, but it’s so long since Ace was out of doors for any significant amount of time that he has to close his eyes against the glare. He stands side by side with Smoker amidships, leaning against the gunwale. A pod of dolphins swims alongside, keeping time with the ship’s speed. The sleek animals seem to leap through the water more than swim, diving and twisting and flinging themselves into the air before slicing back down into the sea. Ace leans into the wet spray of their passage, into the lash of seawater on his skin, and licks the salt tang from his lips. He can’t remember the last time he was this grateful for anything. It stings him on the raw that it’s Smoker on the other end of the gratitude, and for such a stupid reason, but—

“Oi, old man.”

“What?”

Contrary wind whips his hair into his eyes. The sounds of the ocean and of an active, ocean-going ship are in his ears. Salt-splashed air fills his lungs; the acrid scent of Smoker’s cigars surrounds him.

Smoker shifts in place, boots scraping the deck. “Well, Portgas?”

Ace opens his eyes. The glitter of sunlight off water is blinding… and so fucking gorgeous it hurts. He looks over at Smoker. “Thank you.” _For before. For now._

Smoker stares at Ace for what seems like a long time but probably isn’t, before turning his gaze towards the line of sky on sea. “Wind’s changing. Storm tonight.”

He’s right. Now that Ace is paying attention he can smell the approaching storm in the brisk gusts buffeting his skin.

“Portgas.”

“Yeah?”

Smoker pitches his cigar butts over the wale. The sea sucks them down with barely even a swirl of white to show for it. “The officer’s mess is open until twenty-hundred. My men are busy, and you’re old enough to feed yourself.” Pushing away from the wale, Smoker walks past Ace towards the bow. “If someone tells you to get below, do it.”

Ace doesn’t answer; he doesn’t need to. He listens to the heavy clump of Smoker’s footsteps until they fade then looks down at his hand where it grips the wale. Studies the contrast of blue seastone against dull grey steel wrapped around his too-pale wrist. Smoker is giving him a choice. Not much of one, but it’s there. He can suck it up and get on with his life—can learn to use what he’s got now to get where he wants to be. Or he can take the easy out.

The ocean moves, rocking the ship within surge and ebb. Ace can read the strength of the coming storm in the choppy swells; the rhythmic motion lulls him, pulls at him. Draws him in until his blood pounds a matching beat in his ears. Slowly, he uncurls his fingers from the wale’s edge and turns away from fading sunlight on water.

Walking back to Smoker’s cabin is one of the hardest things he's ever done. He stands in the open door, feeling the ship close in around him. Listens to the distant rumble of Smoker giving orders. Getting here was the hard part. Stepping inside and shutting the door behind him is so much easier than it should be.

 

 **day 06**  
A miasma of cigar smoke and blood chokes his dreams. Once, he’s back in Nanohana, back in that moment of ultimate balance. Flash heat, so twisted into and around the living smoke coiling through him that he can’t tell ash from flame. Then smoke is sliding free of flame and he reaches for it, tries to hang on, but it’s gone and he’s face to face with Darkness.

Another logia, this, but where the first was the clean burn of smoke and fire exploding into each other this is something beyond wrong. There can be no match here. There’s no equal for gravity’s sucking drain. The sticky void of it drinks his strength in greedy gulps; it’s eating him alive, tasting him with a thousand licking tongues. Lapping up the dregs of his flame and purring its satisfaction. He fights it, same as he did on Banaro, and just like before there’s a brief stretch of ascendance, a few seconds where he’s sure he’s won, but then

 _weightdarkheavypullingtearing_ gone

He jerks awake, drowning in air, his lungs starved for what’s already in them. His body is a painful arch, his hands clawed up in the sheets, and he’s swimming in sweat, his chest and throat aching with suppressed shouts. He sinks back down on the berth, willing his muscles to relax. Willing his lungs to work _right_.

One at a time, he forces his fingers to uncurl. Muscle by muscle, his body unclenches and he lays flat, listening to his steadying heartbeat. Darkness presses in on him from all sides: night time, the absence of light. He shuts his eyes against it but it follows him down behind his closed lids into the backwash of nightmare. Flame flickers at the edges of sealed vision. Mera Mera. _Logia._

On Banaro he felt his fire leave him, felt Teach’s void suck the flame from his marrow. After that he remembers nothing, not until he woke in a marine holding cell, seastone around his neck and wrists. He hasn’t been free of the stuff since, and he’s glad of it—he’s fucking _grateful_.

He’s grateful for the nausea and exhaustion. Thankful for every day he can still feel the sick hollow inside him, because as long as that hollow exists, he can hang on to the hope that on the day the seastone comes off—if it ever does—there’ll be something left to fill it.

\--

“What the hell are you wearing?”

Ace glances down at his baggier than normal jeans then up at Smoker, who’s standing in the doorway lighting twin cigars and—surprise, surprise—frowning. “Don’t you recognize your own clothes?”

Muscles jump beneath the skin of Smoker’s jaw and neck. Ace hears the crunch of tobacco being ground to fine powder.

“I recognize them. I want to know why they’re attached to your hide.”

“Because my old shorts fell apart the first time your people washed them,” Ace retorts. “Maybe it doesn’t bother you if I walk around bare-assed naked, but I’m not into exhibitionism—not that much.”

Smoker’s expression gets even more constipated than usual, probably because he knows Ace is right. He chews on his cigars some more. Then, grudgingly, “We’re two hours out from One Down. Tashigi’s handling supplies. You’ll go with her—get yourself something that fits.”

“Fine by me.”

“Don’t forget shirts. With sleeves.” Smoker walks a couple steps closer to the berth and scowls at the misspelled tattoo on Ace’s left arm. “Next time you decide to get stupid, try for something less permanent.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Ace says. He wonders why he’s bothering to explain, even a bullshit explanation. He's not about to share any piece of Sabo with Smoker, and he doesn't feel the need to justify himself to anyone. Maybe he just wants to hear his own voice and have someone else respond when he says something. “I didn’t know the guy was drunk.”

“I’m surprised you weren’t.”

Ace rolls his head against the bulkhead until he’s looking up into Smoker’s eyes. “Who said I wasn’t?”

“Idiot. I’m not here to rehash your mistakes, you already know them better than I do. Sit up and lean your head back.”

Warily, Ace unfolds himself from his slouch. He doesn’t think Smoker’s going to hurt him, but you never know with marines—there are some sadistic bastards in ranking positions and he's in no condition to fight back. He slides his legs over the edge of the berth, shies away when Smoker reaches out.

“Sit still.” Smoker sounds disgusted, but when doesn’t he? “Here, you stupid brat.”

Ace blinks at the oddly shaped key on Smoker’s palm. He looks up at Smoker, sure his confusion must show on his face. “For the cabin?”

“For the collar.” Smoker grabs Ace’s chin. “I told you to get your head _back_ , Portgas.” He doesn’t wait for Ace to obey, jerking Ace’s chin up so he can get at the collar’s lock. “Pirates. And if you and that brother of yours aren’t the stupidest pirates in creation—”

“Hey, leave Luffy out of this,” Ace protests faintly, and then something clicks and he’s breathing free for the first time in over a month.

He’s probably just imagining things, but the second Smoker pulls the collar away, he feels like a ten ton weight has lifted off of him. It’s like having a fog blown from his brain on a gust of brisk sea breeze, like he can actually think straight again. And though he can’t feel his fire; although the empty space inside him is still there it seems lesser. More tenuous, like a dissipating cloud of… smoke.

“Portgas.”

Ace flops backwards, hanging off the edge of the berth and grinning at Smoker's upside down scowl. “Something I can do for you, Commodore? I'd thank you properly, but I don't think I can stand up just now.” Damn, this feels _good_.

Smoker’s nostrils flare. He looks like he’s already regretting the collar’s removal. Ace chalks an imaginary mark on his mental scoreboard. Ace: 2, Smoker: 5,241. So he’s behind. So what? He’ll catch up.

“Jeans and shirts. No shorts.”

Smoker is already on his way out. “What’s wrong with shorts?” Ace calls after him. “I _like_ shorts.”

Broad shoulders go rigid under white leather. Ace almost feels sorry for those cigars.

“What part of no shorts don’t you understand?”

“I just want a pair to sleep in.” He whines because he can, because he feels like it, and when Smoker’s scowl deepens, it feels like a win. “Come on, you can't want that nice ensign of yours walking in on me in my altogether?”

Crunch.

Smoker pulls his chewed-through cigars from his mouth and glares at them so hard it's a wonder they don’t spontaneously combust. When he turns on his heel and leaves without another word, Ace doesn't have to guess, he _knows_ he’s won. Inside his brain a thousand miniature Aces are jumping up and down yelling, “I’m back, you marine son of a bitch, and you can put that in your cigars and smoke it!”

He’s not back, not really, but in this moment it feels like he is. As long as the feeling lasts he’s going to enjoy it and no surly marine is going to stop him. Smoker: 5,241. Ace: 3. Only 5,239 to go.

\--

Telemàché is the southernmost port city on One Down Island. It’s a busy town with a constantly shifting population, a thriving fishing industry and a strong marine presence—the last being the main reason Ace has never been there before. He’s on deck when they dock; he’s been there since an hour after Smoker took the collar off, and for once his brain isn’t greying out every time the ship bottoms out. Though he’s been sticking to the stern and generally making himself scarce, Smoker did take notice of him long enough to throw a black tee at him with a gruff, “Put that on,” before going back to harrying his minions, or whatever it is he does when he’s not harrying Ace.

Harbor traffic being what it is, it takes almost half an hour for the local port control to slot them in. By then Tashigi is standing next to Ace in the stern, smiling tentatively and holding out a pair of boots that look a little like his old ones.

“Commodore Smoker says you’re coming with me. I thought you might need these?”

Her voice makes a question of what should have been a statement. Had Ace hated the boots on sight, he’d have still taken them with a wide smile, as he does now. “He told me that, too,” he says, and cocks an eyebrow at Tashigi. “Is that all right with you, Ensign? If not, please allow me to excuse myself from your expedition.”

“No! No, it’s fine, I just—hope you won’t be bored. No one really likes supply runs, but they’re unfortunately necessary.” She gropes for her glasses, blinking in a flustered fashion that’s so cute Ace would have been tempted to mess up her hair the way he used to do to Luffy if the glasses weren’t in the way. Or if he didn’t have the sneaking suspicion that Smoker’s lurking somewhere nearby, watching.

Instead he plucks the glasses from their perch and hands them to her. “Believe me, with that much humanity around after so long of just me, myself and I? It'll be great,” he says, still smiling, and she smiles back, blinking furiously as around them the ship comes to life. Ace can hear Smoker’s raised voice somewhere within the sound rush. Mooring lines are cast—there’s the usual jolting tug, and the gangway is lowered.

Ace tugs the boots on over his bare feet. Good fit. He might even keep them. If Smoker lets him.

“Portgas-san?”

Still bent over, Ace raises his head. Tashigi is looking over her shoulder at him, head tilted to the side in question. Beyond her, Ace can see Smoker standing at the foot of the gangway, arms crossed, cigars and jitte in place. A line of pirates shuffles down the gangway, prodded along by several seamen. Smoker is watching them but he glances briefly up and meets Ace’s gaze. Grey eyes examine Ace as though he’s a problem that needs a solution Smoker hasn’t found yet. The last of the pirate convicts reaches the dock, their movements hampered by leg irons.

Smoker’s eyes flicker between the men filing past him and Ace’s face.

This was you, still could be you. Should be you.

The words hang in the air between them, almost visible, and suddenly Ace wants the cuffs off so badly he can taste it. The want is as bitter on his tongue as his anger. He turns his head sharply, breaking from Smoker’s challenging stare. “I apologize, Ensign,” he tells Tashigi, “I think I left my good sense back in the cabin. I’m ready to follow orders.” He bows, sweeping an arm out in a ladies first gesture, and Tashigi hurries to comply, today’s pink blush just as pretty as those preceding.

Smoker is nowhere to be seen by the time they reach the dock. It doesn’t matter. Ace can still feel icy, condemning eyes on him. It’s going to be one hell of a day.


	2. days 07, 08, 11

**day 07**  
“Is this all right, Portgas-san?”

Tashigi's worried face looks back at Ace from mirrored glass. He gives her a lopsided grin. “It’s perfect, Ensign. Best haircut I’ve had in years.” He doesn’t add that he usually cuts it himself—just pulls it into a tail when it gets too long and hacks it off. He’s made enough work and trouble for this woman. The least he can do is say thanks, especially after yesterday’s shopping excursion that wasn’t.

Having a panic attack in the middle of the open air market was bad enough, but passing out in a men’s clothier? Was the real highlight of the day. He doubts he’ll ever live that one down. Weighed against the freaking out and fainting thing, even Smoker hauling Ace’s unconscious body back to the ship -- over his shoulder, too -- seems less of an insult than a heavy dose of garden variety embarrassment.

He still isn’t sure whether it was the crowds, the seastone, his screwy screwed up brain, or some strange combination of all three that did him in. Whichever, Smoker doesn’t need to worry about him taking off on his own. He can barely manage the officer’s mess at lunch. He hates to think what effect dinner at a crowded eatery would have on him.

Insult to injury, Smoker’s crew has started tiptoeing around him. Everyone from Tashigi and the officer on deck down to the den-den mushi operator gives him weird looks the minute he shows his face topside. They clump together in huddles of two or three, talking in low-voiced mutters and watching him out of the corners of their eyes like they expect him to seizure or maybe explode any second. Ace can understand the inherent bad of a possibly schizoid fire-logia but he’s already on a hair trigger and the staring and whispering is making him twice as jumpy.

“I’ll get someone to clean this up,” Tashigi says in a bright desperate voice, and Ace realizes he’s been staring at his reflection without seeing it for too long.

 _Are you_ trying _to scare her, kid?_ His conscience is starting to sound too familiar for comfort, not least because -- same as Smoker usually does -- it has a point.

Is he trying to scare Tashigi? Does he want the only friendly face he sees to reflect his own fear back at him? Compared to some of the questions he's had to ask himself recently, this one has an almost laughably easy answer. Even if that type of cruelty held some perverse kind of appeal for him, Makino taught him better. And Makino isn't the kind of person you disappoint.

Pulling the towel from around his neck, he folds it to keep his hair ends from scattering and lifts himself clear of his chair. Tashigi reaches for the towel, and he relinquishes it with a rueful smile. “Thank you for this. I appreciate it.” He keeps his tone light and any inappropriate wisecracks behind his teeth. “I’ll get out of your way?”

Her look of mingled gratitude, compassion and discomfort is all the answer he needs. One hand resting on the gunwale, he makes his way towards the main hatch and his new quarters.

With the prisoners gone there’s enough room in the brig for fifteen pirates, but for some reason Smoker hasn’t relegated Ace to that extreme. Yet. Smoker has his cabin back, and Ace the small cubby next to Tashigi’s quarters. Ace wouldn’t have minded bunking in with the rest of Smoker’s men, but obviously Smoker doesn’t trust him that far. Or maybe it’s the crew Smoker doesn’t trust to be around Ace.

Whatever, Ace is just glad to be out of a cabin that screams Smoker’s presence from every smoke-saturated surface. Living in that cabin was like being surrounded by Smoker twenty-four seven, not the best situation in Ace’s book. Not that he hates Smoker—not all the time—it’s just… actually, he doesn’t know what it is and he doesn’t think he needs to.

It’s enough for him to admit to himself that Smoker unsettles him almost as much as he does Smoker’s crew. He’s not ready to ask himself why. He’s not sure he ever will be.

“Portgas.”

And anyway, even if he does someday decide to prod his mental Smoker block he can guarantee it won’t be any time soon—not as long as Smoker makes a habit of walking up behind him in enclosed passageways and scaring the crap out of him. He leans his forehead against the closest bulkhead, shuts his eyes and waits for the pretty purple and green spots to go away. “Do you stealth in and out on everybody or am I just lucky?”

He tilts his chin enough for him to see Smoker standing a few feet away. He's chewing up a pair of unlit cigars and wearing his usual ‘Me rock, you pirate: kiss dirt or you’ll _be_ dirt pretty damn chop-chop’ expression. His hands are shoved deep in his jacket pockets. His jitte is hooked into its loop on his back.

“Going out?” Ace says. “I hope you have a nice time. I’d walk you topside and wave but I have to go puke now.”

He makes it to the head just in time. His breakfast definitely looked better going the other way. He heaves until there’s nothing left in his stomach but bile then heaves up some blood for good measure. God. He’d thought this part of the seastone song and dance was done. He hangs over the head, panting, riding out waves of nausea that rise and fall with the ship’s motion. He’s unsure how long it takes them to subside, but eventually they do. He rinses his mouth out in the sink, splashes water on his face, and as he’s wiping himself dry he gets a good look at his reflection for the second time in maybe an hour.

It’s funny. He’s looked at himself in a mirror almost every morning since Smoker stopped him being the world government’s latest fun with really long knives. He’s glanced in passing; made sure everything checked out. He just hasn’t _seen._ Not until now.

He’s—stupid as it sounds, he guesses the word he wants is attractive. And he knows it. Hard not to. He’s had people of both sexes coming on to him on a regular basis since he hit his teens, a lot of them old enough to know better than to proposition an underage kid. As far as he can tell, whatever his appeal, it grew with the rest of him.

He’s not even above using it – on Grand Line you take whatever advantage you can get – but that only goes so far. If the creeps of the world want to believe he’s available because he hates wearing shirts that’s their business, as long as they keep their hands and opinions to themselves.

If they don’t… well, that’s when it becomes his business. And then they learn the hard way why they’re wrong.

But as long as random weirdos stick to looking and not touching, it’s okay with him. He’s never been able to see the attraction himself—didn’t before, doesn’t now—but he _is_ beginning to understand how a guy might get a little spooky about his appearance. He’s not vain, but when the picture in his head gets as far away from reality as it is now it’s more than a little disturbing.

 _I could probably cut myself on my own bones._

Ever since Teach’s darkness sucked him down into nothing he’s felt emptied out. Hollow. He’s realizing now that he’s hollow all over, not just inside. His bones jut out from under his skin, and it's paper-white paper-thin skin stretched tightly over the bone structure beneath. His lips look even whiter than the rest of him -- although that could be due in part to the fact that he just heaved up his guts -- and his eyes...

They look less like eyes than a pair of dark holes in his head, dead, lightless, the skin around them so bruised he might as well have a pair of shiners.

The head door shakes under someone's fist. “Portgas?”

 _Fuck._ Dropping the towel on the sink, Ace turns his back on the remains of his old self and jerks the door open. “Can’t a guy get some peace around here? Puking is serious business.”

“The log pose should set tomorrow night. We’ll sail Thursday dawn.” Smoker is leaning against the bulkhead, arms crossed. His cigars are lit and the smoke from them tickles the back of Ace’s sore throat.

Ace grips the hatchway, holding himself steady. “Please excuse my rudeness in interrupting you, but could you make your point? I’d like to sit down before I fall down. If it’s all the same to you, I don’t think my ego can take another ride over your shoulder. Don’t think my stomach could either.”

Smoker flicks him a sideways glance. “You’re still wearing my jeans.”

“Yeah, well, shit happens.”

Smoker's expression sours. He looks like a man hanging grimly on to the dregs of his patience with his fingernails. “Portgas, you _are_ the shit that’s happening. You're fucking up my schedule. I could have you carried," and he looks like he's considering it... "But you'd fuck that up too. I'll deal with you myself.”

“With a brain like that, I’m surprised you’re not fleet admiral,” Ace says. He rubs a hand over his eyes and through his newly trimmed hair. “Can we do this tomorrow? Seastone is screwing me sideways, backwards and upside down, and unless you want to take it off…” He holds up his free hand, jiggles it in Smoker’s face.

Smoker looks at the cuffs. He looks at Ace. The corner of his mouth twitches. “Nice try. Tomorrow morning, nine-hundred. Be at the gangway, or I haul you out there myself.”

Ace waits until Smoker is already walking away before muttering, “Yes sir, of course sir, anything you say, _sir_.”

“I heard that,” Smoker says without turning. He disappears upwards through the main hatch, and Ace stares after him for a few seconds, blinking, before pulling himself upright and staggering towards his tiny cabin and soft, beckoning berth. He falls face first onto the bedding, already half asleep. Exhaustion has a stranglehold on his brain, but he has just enough consciousness left to contemplate the idea of a Smoker who can make him laugh. The sense of humor stuff needs to stop. One more run-in like this last and he's going to start thinking Smoker might be human after all.

As human as logia ever get, anyway.

 

 **day 08**  
The panic that lately mugged Ace in the Telemàché marketplace must have other victims on its agenda today, as the walk up from the docks is uneventful. The town’s main thoroughfare is busy but not crowded and Ace slouches along the pavement next to Smoker, keeping his head down. A marine cap shades his eyes; his hands are stuffed deep into the pockets of a pair of Smoker’s spare jeans. They pass a shop with a wide bay window front and Ace catches a glimpse of their reflections in the glass then has to hold back a laugh. Aside from the marine logos and Smoker’s jitte, the pair of them could be an aggravated father and sullen teenage son thrown out of the house by the mater familias and told to make themselves scare.

As covers go, it’s not bad. The last thing they want is to attract attention. This is a marine town, but for once the navy isn’t the issue. Marines or not, One Down is a major destination for sailors of all kinds, pirates included. Ace has made quite a few enemies for a guy barely into his twenties and they’re the kind to shoot first and ask questions later. Usually that wouldn’t be a problem, but for now…

He looks down at the metal almost hidden within the folds of his pockets. As of an hour ago, the thick cuffs he’s worn for a month are gone, replaced by bands of thin seastone-inlaid steel. On anyone not a devil fruit user they’d be pure decoration.

Back at the ship, Ace had looked them over then raised an eyebrow at Smoker. “You want to ruin my badass rep for good, don’t you?”

“Those stupid red beads did that a long time ago.” Smoker exchanged cuffs for bands one at a time, snapping the new set’s locks into place and shooting Ace a wry look. “I’d think your reputation would be the least of your worries.”

It is, but he’s not about to tell Smoker that. He’s also not going to let Smoker guess how much this little stroll is costing him. Even with the lighter bands it’s an effort to keep himself upright. Every step is like trying to wade through thigh deep water at high tide.

These days he'd be hard put to fight off ankle-grabbing surf much less anything more, but he wasn’t born a logia—he remembers swimming. He misses it sometimes. Misses the cool wet of water closing over his head. Remembers hovering weightless in silent stasis, looking upwards through diluted sunlight and knowing that one strong kick would carry him out of water into air. If he tried that now, he’d be looking up all right; all the way from the ocean floor for the rest of his very short life, as each step he takes reminds him.

“Hold it.” Smoker's hand closes over his nape. “Here.”

Startled, Ace jerks his head up and around. Sometime within the last few minutes, he must have followed Smoker onto a side street, because they’re in a narrow lane dividing tight-packed buildings. Foot traffic is down to almost nothing and he relaxes slightly. For the moment quiet side streets are about his speed.

Smoker steers him toward an open doorway and he doesn’t resist. He goes where he’s led, stops when Smoker releases him. After the cloudless brilliance of outside, the inside of the shop is dim. Ace blinks his eyes into focus and looks around.

The shop Tashigi picked two days ago was popular and tidy and full of clothes that reminded Ace of the styles worn by a town full of elitists who burned their poor with their trash. He wouldn't have stayed even if he hadn't been on the verge of freaking out; _this_ place is definitely more what he’s used to.

Years’ worth of dust, rust and sea rot hangs over the room in an almost visible cloud. Clothes are jumbled together across tables and shelves—lots of denim and cotton in dark colors and a wide range of fatigues, jeans and boots. Ace makes a mental note to annoy Smoker less for the rest of the day and edges toward a pile of shorts and trousers. Is that black denim under the olive drab?

“What do you think you’re doing in here?” The sharp tone stops Ace in his tracks. He glances over his shoulder and stands pilloried by the nastiest look he's encountered this side of Luffy’s navigator getting ready to lay the smackdown on her nakama.

Apparently the shopkeeper is the surly, anti-marine variety. He scowls at Ace’s cap, then his gaze drifts over to Smoker’s jitte and his eyes narrow to slits. “I don’t deal with your kind, Mr. Hunter, you’re bad for business. You trying to scare off my clientele?”

“This _is_ your clientele,” Smoker jerks his chin at Ace. “Remember what I said, Portgas. No shorts.”

“Just for sleeping in,” Ace replies. He didn’t miss the proprietor’s start when Smoker said his name. He wonders what Smoker’s up to now. He doesn't usually make stupid mistakes and he never does anything without a reason.

Before Ace can decide if Smoker is trying to get him killed, rescued, or something unspecified but probably not fun, Smoker turns his frown on him. “I don’t have all day. Get moving.”

“Don’t get your shorts in a hitch, I’m going… see?” He backs farther into the stacks, his hands raised. The proprietor stares at his wrists, mouth open. Ace flashes him a grin. “Pretty, huh? Present from my guy,” he nods at Smoker. “He spoils me good.”

Smoker makes a strangled noise. So much for reduced aggravation. Ace watches out of the corner of his eye as Smoker walks over to stand in the doorway. “Get your shit together, Portgas—it’s not going to matter what you’re wearing if I decide to kill you.”

“Yes _sir_.” Saluting, he retreats into stacks of clothing, still grinning. It’s his first real grin in too long, and it’s strange but good to feel those muscles stretching again.

Annoyance factor notwithstanding, he doesn’t want to drag things out longer than he has to. He’s getting dizzy again. He manages three pair of trousers, two pair of shorts and an armful of shirts in less than ten minutes, but he’s still out of breath when he dumps the lot in front of the shopkeeper. Smoker is nowhere to be seen, which surprises him a little. “Where’s—”

The proprietor jerks his thumb at the door. “Already paid. Says he’s waiting for you.”

For one glorious moment, Ace considers asking if this place has a back door and making a run for it. The proprietor is a pirate sympathizer; he’d probably keep his mouth shut, maybe even stall Smoker long enough for Ace to…

Long enough for Ace to get nowhere in a hurry. He’d have to stop somewhere and work the bands off his wrists, and by then Smoker would be all over him. Or worse, he’d run into someone with a hefty grudge and even heftier blade.

“You—you’re Fire Fist, aren’t you?” The proprietor extends a clothes-filled canvas bag towards him, curiosity in his eyes. “Thought you’d got the chop.”

“So did I.” Ace takes the bag and gives the shopkeeper a nod of thanks, but leaves without answering the man’s question. Smoker may think it’s okay to spread Ace’s name around for some purpose known only to himself. Ace prefers to err on the side of caution. He also expects to see Smoker the second he steps through the doorway and when he doesn’t, he starts to think that either Smoker’s screwing with him or… no. Smoker wouldn’t let him go. Not here, and not like this.

Ace makes a last, visual search of the street. Screw it. He’ll just start walking. Whatever game Smoker is playing, he'll find out soon enough. He only vaguely remembers the way back to the docks, but there isn’t much difference between this and other harbor towns. If he keeps going in the direction the gulls are flying, he should be fine. And he is fine, if a little unsteady, until a hand reaches out of an alley and drags him into refuse-ripe shadows.

Steel sharp enough to cut through bone strokes up over the skin of his throat. The point circles his neck and slides down the center of his back, serrated edge digging slightly in. “Nice hat,” says a voice Ace knows as well as he does his own. “Shame it doesn’t match the tatts.”

The bag falls from Ace’s slack fingers. He swallows, his throat suddenly, painfully dry. “I didn’t have much choice in head gear.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why you’re still breathing.” The blade lifts and Ace turns carefully in place. He holds his arms out to each side, makes no sudden movements, and then he’s looking into a face he hasn’t seen in half a year.

“Long time, kid,” says Whitebeard’s first mate. “For a while there I thought that was gonna be a permanent thing.”

“You and me both.”

Neither of them makes a move towards the other. There’s too much history in between. Too many days spent in the service of their captain. Too many nights spent wrapped around each other, nothing between them but skin and sweat. Too much time has passed since Ace left Whitebeard’s first division and took over his second. He doesn’t really know Marco anymore. He just knows what Marco is capable of.

“Took a while to track you down. That marine you’re traveling with moves fast.”

“You idiots were going to pick me up when they moved me out of lockdown?” He wasn't going to say that. He wasn't but it's out and he can hear the edge in his own voice.

“Captain said.” Marco shrugs. “You understand.”

“Yeah," says Ace. "I understand." He disobeyed. His mess, his problem, his responsibility. As it should be. He doesn't want anyone else paying for his lack of judgment. Pops _knows_ that, but he still--

“Got a mole at Marineford. Figured it’d be easiest to get you out there. Your commodore grabbed you the day before we would have.”

There’s a certain relief in knowing Whitebeard hasn’t given up on him. That he's forgiven him his mistakes and his stupidity. It warms him and chills him deeper than seastone. It doesn’t change anything. “I owe him,” he says quietly.

Marco is staring at Ace, his mouth little more than a white line. Ace meets his eyes; he doesn’t need to look down to know that Marco’s hand is on the hilt of the knife he doesn't usually carry. Marco’s thoughts are written clear across his face. Ace is wrapped up in seastone. If Marco attacked, they’d be less than evenly matched for the first time, and he doesn't need his phoenix for this. Ace has no weapon but his body and he’s far from in top condition.

Marco’s nostrils flare; his hand clenches on his knife hilt then abruptly goes slack. Mouth shut tight around the words Ace knows he wants to say, he turns and walks toward the mouth of the alley. His stride is unhurried, familiar, and Ace’s stomach clenches even as his mouth opens. “Hold up a second—I’ve got a message for Pops.”

Marco pauses. The sun’s angle makes a shadow of him; Ace can’t see anything but his outline, the feathery gold-edged shell of him.

“Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him once the White Hunter is done with me, he can have my head.”

“He doesn’t want your head, shit for brains, he wants you. Why do you think he sent me instead of Jozu?” Marco says without turning, and then he’s walking away, not looking back.

Ace doesn’t want to watch him go, but he can’t make his eyes obey. When Marco disappears around the corner, it’s as though the Gates of Justice just closed behind Ace for the second time. This time, there’s no future reprieve waiting.

He lets go the tiny thread of willpower holding him upright. His vision greys, his body collapses in on itself, and his ass hits the filthy ground with a jarring thud. He slumps against the building behind him and tries to breathe around the bile and regret blocking his throat. He hasn’t cried since before he left Fūsha. Fuck if he will now.

Screw this. Them. All of them, Blackbeard, Marco, maybe even... no, not Whitebeard. Not the only man he'll ever call father. Smoker, though -- Smoker is something else altogether. And speaking of Smoker, although there’s no physical indication of his presence, Ace knows he’s here. He probably watched the whole thing.

“Come on out.” Ace barely recognizes the rough croak coming from his mouth as his own voice. “You missed the punch line, but you can still laugh if you want.”

Wisps of grey and white drift past Ace. Smoker doesn’t appear so much as materialize. Smoke writhes, coalesces, and then Smoker is leaning against Ace’s wall, pulling a pair of cigars from his coat.

Ace’s head aches; his temples pound and the seastone on his wrists nags and throbs like an abscessed tooth. He’s exhausted and cold to his bones, and he’s just told the closest thing he’s ever had to a lover and something very close to a brother to get lost. There isn't much resistance in him, which is maybe why he takes Smoker’s denim covered leg as an invitation. He leans into Smoker, rests his cheek against rough fabric and closes his eyes. Hears the snap of Smoker’s lighter opening, the crackle of flame eating into tobacco.

“You knew,” he says, the words muffled against Smoker’s leg. “You dragged me down here for this, not the clothes.”

“A ship with the right markings was in port when we docked.” Neither denial nor admission. Not really an answer, either.

“Just for the record?” Ace says.

“Yeah?”

“You are a grade A bastard.”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before.” An amused grade A bastard. “I won’t argue the point.”

“Well, I’d like to know what the point _is_.” Silence beats in the hollow of Ace’s throat. It pumps through his bloodstream into his brain and nerve endings, funnels down to churn alongside the anger building in his gut. He pushes himself away from Smoker and glares up at him. “Go ahead, Commodore. Tell me why I just betrayed my captain and make it good.”

“I wanted to know,” says Smoker.

“Know what?” The anger explodes, spewing upwards from Ace’s stomach into his chest and mouth. “That I belong to you instead of Whitebeard? That I’m your pirate dog on a seastone chain?”

“If you’d run.”

It's about what he expected. He just hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.

Digging his fingers into crumbling mortar, Ace hauls himself to his feet and stands in front of Smoker, swaying, relying on the strength of his fury to keep him upright. “You know something, old man? I’m tired of being jerked around. I’m tired of seastone and marines and you, so why don’t you—”

“You ever consider what would have happened if I’d left you at HQ and Whitebeard had come after you?”

Ace blows out a breath. It’s somehow just like Smoker to answer anger with non sequiturs. “It seemed like a good idea when I was sitting in Impel Down,” he snaps.

The kids in Edge Town had some kind of stupid... skipping rhyme? Something—

 _liar, liar, pants on_ —

Stupid. If they'd left him alone long enough, given him opportunity and a little leeway he'd have taken care of the problem himself. He should have had the guts to do it when Smoker gave him the chance.

“Whitebeard’s fleets up against the strongest marine force in existence outside of Mariejois?” Smoker is watching Ace from expressionless eyes. “What does that sound like to you, Portgas? Sounds like a yonkou declaring war on the world government to me.”

And that's it, isn't it? Why as much as he'd wanted out, he wanted rescue even less.

“You were bait. I don’t know where the kill order originated from but someone who ranks High Command wants to shake Sengoku’s tree and see what falls out. Somebody else didn’t agree with the method—they sent me. How else do you think I got you out of HQ without a fight?” Smoker grinds his cigar butts out on the side of the building and tosses them aside. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat and looks up at the sky.

“I’m sailing tomorrow. I may be able to pick your brother’s trail up somewhere around Sabaody, but I'm not going to bet on it. You wouldn’t believe the reports coming out of there.” Smoker glances back down at Ace. “Maybe you would.” He steps towards Ace and stands in front of him. “Hold out your hands.”

Ace stares blankly at Smoker, unmoving. Smoker’s stopped making sense, not that he ever did, but—

“I said hold out your hands.” Smoker grabs one of Ace’s wrists. “Stupid pirate." A click and then another; bands loosening, falling away and—

Later, Ace will wonder how visible the flames were. Supposedly the Banaro Island explosion was seen as far as two islands away. Right now he doesn’t care about anything but the heat roaring through him, boiling up out of him into the sky. He screams his release—from the seastone, from the shell of his body—and the fire burns hotter, rises higher, and he _is_ the fire, no longer flesh, nothing binding him to the world spread out below him like endless tinder.

But there is something more, something other than his firestorm. White-grey rides jagged spurts of flame: containing, not suppressing. It shapes fire’s bright, hot edge, confining sparks to smoky coils. Pushes him just enough to remind him that he has another shape.

He resists at first. He doesn’t want to return but the smoke is insistent and some part of him acknowledges unpaid debts. Fire spirals down into smoke, conceding this time, this struggle, in this place alone.

Ace opens his eyes. He’s back in the alley, Smoker chewing up a new pair of cigars next to him. He’s whole. “Why?”

“I want to talk to your brother and his crew without them running like scared rabbits. I think Straw Hat might listen if it was you asking.”

“But—”

“I said talk, not arrest.” Smoker's eyes meet Ace’s over Smoker's unlit cigars and it’s easy—so beautifully easy—for Ace to extend himself just enough to light them.

“So you talk to Luffy,” fire jumps from his fingers to the cigars, “then what?”

“I guess you’ll have to come along if you want to find out,” Smoker says. A gang of kids runs past the mouth of the alley, shouting and laughing, babbling about the weird fire that had burst briefly into existence overhead then gone out like it’d never been. Smoker turns back to Ace. “You know the dock number, Portgas. Don’t make me come after you.”

It’s an empty threat, as empty as Ace was not even half an hour ago. Smoker knows Ace will be on that ship tomorrow. He made damned sure of it before he gave Ace his fire back. Bastard.

Ace trails Smoker from the alley, retrieving his abandoned bag of clothes on the way, but stops short as he steps into dazzling sunlight. He scans the surrounding buildings, casts a glance at the sky. Everything looks more—immediate? More real, maybe. He looks down at his bare wrists. The scars and bruises from the cuffs are still there. He left them on purpose—wants to feel them heal. He needs to remember.

“Move your ass, kid.” Smoker is half a street away and getting farther fast. Ace jogs after him. His hand goes automatically to his head to hold his hat in place, finds the marine cap instead.

“Hey old man!”

“What?” Smoker barks without turning.

“I need a new hat.” Breathless, not quite free of the seastone yet, Ace skids up beside Smoker. “I can’t wear this marine crap.”

“You trying to piss me off?”

Ace grabs a handful of Smoker’s jacket and jerks him around. Steps closer and looks up into his eyes. “I’m still a pirate. I’ll always be a pirate.”

“No shit,” Smoker snorts, “and no hat. You’re conspicuous enough as it is.” He pulls his sleeve out of Ace's grip and starts walking again. “Keep those tattoos covered.”

“I wasn’t the one throwing my name around back there,” Ace calls after him, then has to run to catch up.

“You got your clothes and Whitebeard got confirmation that you’re alive. I’d say you’ve done enough damage for one day.”

Smoker has a point and Ace has his shorts. He’ll find a hat next island. He tugs his marine cap down over his eyes and grins. After the hat, well… there’s always the beads.

 

 **day 11**  
“Oi Portgas, stick around!”

“Yeah, give us a shot at winning some of that back.”

Ace tucks a thick wad of belli into his shorts pocket and grins at the men crowded around a card-littered table. “Sorry guys, you’ll have to settle for cleaning each other out. I know when to say when.” He bows. "Thank you for your company and your time."

“Well I know a good idea when I hear it.” A blond marine around Ace’s age throws his cards on the table and stands. “I’m out. It’s my watch soon, anyway.”

“You trying to kill me, Schaefer?” whines someone else. “That’s half my pay right there.”

“Better me and Portgas now than your old lady when she finds out what you did with the other half,” the blond—Schaefer—says with callous good cheer. Ignoring a chorus of groans and curses, he looks at Ace and cocks his head towards the port. “Coming with?”

“Right behind you.” Ace grabs his shirt off the back of an empty chair as he follows the other man out. The mess hall port seals shut behind them, muting laughter and conversation, and they pause together on the aftercastle deck, looking up at the sky. It’s cool tonight; nowhere near winter island temperatures, but chilly enough to raise gooseflesh on Schaefer’s arms. If Ace was still wearing seastone, he’d be shaking like a tree caught in a hurricane.

“Blows your mind, doesn’t it? All this empty stretching out around you, nothing but water and stars for miles.”

Ace glances at Schaefer, a little surprised by the man’s simple but effective imagery. “Back when I first left home, it freaked me out.” He smiles, remembering. “My kid brother and I always shared a room, and it was weird falling asleep without him snoring in my ear.”

“Same here, in a way," says Schaefer. He leans forward, resting his elbows on the railing. “Big city, big family. I think that’s why I joined up in the first place—I was used to it. Once the navy gets a hold of you, you don’t have two minutes to yourself unless you’re unconscious.”

Ace laughs out loud. “I believe you.”

“I guess it’s not much different for pirates.”

The glance is quick, gone in an instant, but Ace catches it anyway. Although Smoker’s crew has been more easy around him since One Down, they’re still cautious, still restrained, and he appreciates that. He’s trying to work his way back to normal human behavior—the logia version, anyway—but he’s still… edgy. Liable to go fire first and think about consequences after, which is a bad default reaction aboard ship.

Physically he’s a thousand times better, if not yet all there. His joints ache and creak like he’s a hundred years old and the urge to sleep at odd times is greater now than his genetic predisposition ever made it. Mentally? He’s not even going there. Fire, food and sleep will fix what’s wrong with his body. They can’t do anything about what’s going on in his head.

Next to Ace, Schaefer stirs restlessly. “Hey, it really is my watch but, uh—” He breaks off and Ace can almost hear him debating whether or not to finish the sentence. The judges must have come up positive. “Company is always welcome,” he says. “If you—well. Offer stands.”

Ace carefully does not meet Schaefer’s eyes. He’s been out of circulation for a while and he could be wrong, but he’s almost positive he just got propositioned. It’s not like this is the first time, and probably won’t be the last, but it’s the first for these very weird circumstances, wanted pirate running tame aboard a marine frigate.

Schaefer seems like a nice guy. Ace doesn’t want to offend him, and well, nice guy, so he doubts he will. He still wishes Schaefer hadn’t said anything. This isn’t the kind of position he wants to be in—not at all, but especially not now—and he’s relieved when, before he can get a response together, there’s a metallic click followed by a soft _hrush_ of smoke-scented air.

“In my experience, pirates and watch don’t mix,” says Smoker.

Schaefer jumps like somebody just goosed him, no other description for it, and comes to rigid attention. You could hurt yourself on the angle of his salute, it’s so precise. “Sir!”

“You were supposed to relieve Chang five minutes ago. Get moving.”

“Yessir!”

Ace listens to the fading tread of Schaefer’s retreat. It's not exactly a run, but not exactly a walk, either. He eyes Smoker sidelong. “That was awkward.”

Smoker isn’t looking at Ace—he’s staring past him, off in the direction Schaefer took. “I realize you’re bored, but I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from suborning my men.”

Smoker’s tone is easy, amused even, but Ace knows—without knowing how he knows—that Smoker is as far from amused as someone can get. “It was a few rounds of poker, not an invitation to mutiny,” Ace says. He feels as though he’s walking across an iced-over lake and he just stepped on something that creaked ominously.

“That didn’t sound like cards to me.”

He thinks—no, he knows he’s not going to like where this is going. Smoker’s gaze drops from Ace's face to his bare torso, and for the first time ever Ace feels like boots and shorts aren't enough. He tugs his shirt on, leaving it unbuttoned, and hooks his thumbs into his pockets. “He was making conversation. Being polite to the poor, ignored prisoner. You know what polite is, don’t you, Commodore?”

“I know certain kinds of polite will get you executed for treason and fraternization.”

“I never even met the guy before two hours ago. Maybe he was coming on to me, maybe he wasn’t. Either way, nothing happened.”

It’s more than just the cigars leaking smoke. “If one of my men has behaved inappropriately, I expect you to tell me.”

Ace scrubs a hand through his hair, scraping it away from his face in quick shoves. “Stop being a marine long enough to pull your head out of your ass and listen. All he did was ask me to share his watch. If you’d waited a few more seconds, you’d have heard me decline, with thanks.” He waits, but Smoker isn't even looking at him. His jaw clenches involuntarily. “You’re in a mood. You got something to say worth hearing, or did you just come up here to piss me off?”

Silence picks Ace’s words up, shakes them around a few times and flings them at the sea. The water is quiet around them, calm. It ripples, bright within dark under colorless moonlight.

“We’ll dock briefly on G-4 tomorrow evening, two hours at most,” Smoker says. “You’ll want to stay below until we cast off.” He’s moving even as the words leave his mouth, obviously meaning to be gone before Ace can get up a comeback or ask a question, but Ace has had it with Smoker’s taciturn act. He lunges forward, grabs the back of Smoker’s jacket and hangs on, and Smoker jerks to a stop. He turns his head and looks back at Ace, his expression promising a lot of painful consequences if Ace doesn’t grow a brain and let go right the fuck now.

Ace stares back; it takes more than a few scowls to intimidate him. “I’m not your subordinate,” he says, enunciating each word before letting it drop off into the wet dark below. “If you want me to do something, you don’t just tell me what. You tell me why, and then maybe I say yes.”

“Idiot.”

His hand is wrapped around leather and then it isn't. His fingers are full of smoke. He swears viciously—stupid fucking _mistake_ —and he’s in the air, flying through the air, slamming back first into the hull. His chest hitches, choppy arrhythmic up and down. Acrid smoke fills his nostrils and throat. “The cuffs are gone but you’re still my prisoner,” Smoker’s voice says against his ear. “My men get a say, sometimes. You don’t.”

He wants to call his fire and he would. He's that angry. He’s also on a ship in the middle of nowhere and he does sometimes have a vague sense of self preservation. If he burned Smoker's ship down he’d go down with it, and Smoker knows that, damn it. His breath is hot against Ace’s cheek, gloved fingers tight around Ace’s throat, getting tighter, air trapped straining in his lungs, blinding white exploding behind his closed eyes and then something (what?) changes, loosens, and Ace can breathe again. He gulps and heaves, and his eyes snap wide, and he’s looking up into Smoker’s face, just inches away from his own.

Smoker’s hand is still around Ace’s neck, fingers draped loose over damaged skin. Ace can feel bruises forming already. He’ll be looking at purple-black imprints in the mirror tomorrow. He swallows around the ache and Smoker’s eyes track the movement, and that’s when things go from fucked up to just fucked because Smoker is touching Ace and looking at Ace, and he looks like he’s really seeing what he’s looking at.

It's not… he doesn't know where to put any of this and he can't think and Smoker is too close. There’s not enough air or space in the world for how much room Ace wants to put between them, and there’s barely a breath, Smoker’s breath and Ace’s breath, like they’re breathing for each other and that's... this is _crazy_ , Ace is losing it, he’s—this isn't what he’s thinking, he won't let it be. He doesn’t even know what it is he thinks he’s thinking, it's all tangled up in grey and gold and white and red and he can't, he doesn't--

Smoker lets go of him so abruptly he staggers, slapping his palms flat against the hull and looking for more balance than his legs can give him. He stares at Smoker, breath coming too fast for no real reason, and Smoker steps back and just stands there, looking at Ace without speaking. Then he turns away, _walks_ away and Ace is alone, back and palms still pressed against the hull, feeling like something just happened that wasn’t supposed to.

Or maybe that's the wrong way around. Maybe he ought to change perspectives, come at it from a different direction and say that this is him getting paranoid over something that might have gone down in some screwy parallel universe, but wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in fire of happening in this one. Maybe, he thinks as a hatch slams somewhere in the distance, this is him being cautious, as opposed to him slipping over the edge of paranoia into mania. This is him _not_ thinking too hard about something that doesn’t matter. And the ringing in his ears isn’t what’s left of his common sense kissing his brain goodbye, either.

Sure.


	3. days 12, 13, 16

**day 12**  
“G-4?” Tashigi’s hands still briefly, hovering over the sword laid across her knees. Then she's moving again, pushing her hair back from her face and off the worry lines on her forehead. Steadying the sword before it can fall off her lap. “For an eternal pose. Didn’t Commodore Smoker tell you?”

Ace rolls up onto his elbow and props his head on his hand. The deck is warm under his skin, the sky is clear, and he’s not wearing seastone. For the moment Smoker is a non-issue.

“When it comes to being in the loop,” he says, “I doubt I’m on your commodore’s short list.”

She blinks at him and her hand goes slack around her sword's hilt. She drops the polishing cloth she just picked up and she's fumbling, reaching back down for it, hair swinging forward into her face again. “Oh. I—I… yes. I apologize, Portgas-san. I thought—oh!”

Her glasses clink and bounce, sliding towards him across deck. Before she can start to grope for them, Ace uncurls himself and picks them up.

He hands them to her with a laugh. “You should get one of those connecting ribbons,” he says as she pushes them into place. “It might keep them attached. And it’s not a problem, Ensign. Pirate, remember?”

This time her flush starts up high, burning across her cheekbones before spreading lower. “Portgas-san—”

“It’s all right,” he interrupts easily; not exactly the polite thing, but he thinks it’s probably the right thing. He rolls up onto his knees, settling in front of her, mirroring her position. Nods at the katana on her lap.

“That’s not the one you usually have – Shigure, right?”

His effort at distraction is a success. The blush drains away. Tashigi’s eyes clear and focus on her sword. “No. I took this from a pirate. It’s a second generation ryo wazamono. Its name—” she breaks off to frown at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

He could laugh it off. Say something Luffy-like and derailing. But that’s not really him. Not the him he is around her. “Promise not to kill me?” he says.

“P-Portgas-san?”

And he wasn’t going to laugh, but he has to; she looks so confused and maybe a little horrified. “It’s not that bad, Ensign.”

“Well.” She absentmindedly pushes her glasses up on top of her head and rubs her forehead. “I—I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to!”

It feels normal to laugh again. For a while he thought it never would.

“Good to know,” he says, and feels his laughter trail off into a smile. “I was just thinking that you remind me of Roronoa when you’re taking care of your swords.”

Her eyes round out, pupils shrinking away to nothing. Her mouth opens and closes. Opens. Closes and opens again and stays that way, but no sound is coming out.

Ace starts laughing again. He can’t not. “I apologize for any insult given, Ensign. It wasn’t meant as one. I’m pretty sure Roronoa takes better care of his swords than he does himself.” He looks back down. Holds out his hand. “May I?”

She looks down at the sword. Back up at him.

“I’ll be careful.”

Tashigi bites her lip. And holds the katana out to him.

He takes it hilt first and lifts it. Stretches it lengthwise and watches sunlight spark off steel. “I don’t know much about katana,” he says, tilting it, tipping a stray sunbeam the length of the blade. “Hawk-Eyes tried to explain hamon and lineage to me one time, but I—”

“You know Mihawk Hawk-Eyes?” she blurts out. “The shichibukai?”

He raises his eyebrows and she’s blushing again, ducking her head. “I don’t know him exactly,” he says. “He was there once when I was visiting Red Hair. He and Pops don’t exactly… see eye to eye I guess you could say.”

She looks like she doesn’t know whether to be outraged or dazzled. To be a marine or a swordsman.

The swordsman wins out. She leans forward, searching his face. Eager. “What did he say? Did he tell you the history of Kokuto Yoru? Did he show you—”

“Whoa, hold on a second,” he laughs, hands flung up to ward off the flood. “It was two years ago and I wasn’t paying that close of attention.”

Her face falls, almost literally, and he wishes now that he _had_ paid closer attention to Hawk-Eyes so he could repeat word for word everything the guy had said.

“You know,” he says, offhand casual, “watching him and Shanks try to hack each other up was better than a lecture.”

Her mouth parts, although he doesn’t think she wants to say anything. It’s more like she’s trying to catch her breath. Her eyes are very far away.

“Shanks.” Barely even a whisper, like a half-forgotten, rejected wish. A breath of something verging on sacred. “It’s said that before he lost his arm he was the only swordsman in the world who could fight Mihawk to a standstill.”

And where would she be, who would _she_ be fighting if Smoker hadn’t found her first?

Somewhere at the ends of the earth, chasing a ship shaped like a damned coffin.

Battling Zoro bloody for something they both want more than their own lives.

Maybe. Probably. But here she is on this sunny deck, getting teased by a pirate while her chosen captain brands his own kind of justice into the Line. Ace can’t bring himself to be disappointed.

He says, “I don’t know how good he used to be, but he does pretty well with just one arm.” Holding the sword out to her, he inclines his head. “Thank you for sharing its spirit with me. I may not know much about katana, but this one feels strong and clean.”

“Its name is Boufuu,” she says, laying it back across her thighs. “I think… I think strong and clean are… good words.”

Her hand trembles a little on the hilt and he looks away. “Sorry to take up so much of your free time,” he says. “I’ll be quiet now.”

She says something under her breath that sounds like, “Now, when I don’t _want_ you to—”

But when Ace says, “I didn’t catch that,” she just shakes her head and picks up her cloth, bending down over the sword. Smiling, Ace stretches out on his back, links his hands beneath his head, and closes his eyes.

Without sight everything else becomes more overpowering. The smell of the sea and Tashigi’s light, powdery scent, made stronger by sweat.

The heat of the deck under him and the sun, turning the backs of his eyelids red.

Sound is magnified, every footstep and distant word as clear as if the people making noise were standing right next to him. So it’s easy to hear his name when it drifts down from the upper deck, “—Fire Fist. How long do you reckon we’ll have him aboard?”

“Dunno,” someone replies. “Maybe until this evening? They’ve got the facilities to hold him on G-4.”

“Yeah, but Commodore Smoker already took him off one installation. And he’s not wearing seastone anymore. Why do that if he was just going to dump him somewhere else?”

“Maybe it’s a relay. Hand him off every time Whitebeard gets too close.”

There’s a burst of uneasy laughter. Ace feels his mouth curve up a little more. Then a new voice says, “The way I see it, he’ll be around as long as he’s keeping the commodore’s bed warm. Probably a nice change from Ensign Tight Ass.”

Ace opens his eyes. Above him the sky is a bowl of blue poured out in forever time elapse. The drop of sweat rolling down the center of Tashigi’s forehead seems to hang suspended.

“Or he could be making room for both of them,” the new voice adds. Ugly silence follows, almost more insulting than the words that went before.

But nobody says anything else, nobody laughs, and eventually Ace hears the tread of people dispersing back to their jobs.

“Interesting thing,” he says after forever and a moment when the sound of footsteps has died away. “Did I ever tell you about the time I stole a uniform and snuck onto this marine base—G-2, I think it was?” He sits up, hooks his arms around his knees. “I pulled it off pretty well. Bet I could do it agai—”

“Stop. Please.”

He frowns at her bent head, at the part of her hair exposing the vulnerable line of neck and spine disappearing under her shirt.

“Portgas-san.” Boufuu is sheathed and laid carefully on the deck. Tashigi’s fingers dig into the fabric of her jeans and the skin and muscle beneath; she’s going to have a lovely set of ten matching bruises.

Her head is still bowed, her eyes squeezed shut. The shudder of her breathing shakes her shoulders every time she exhales.

“Commodore Smoker. You mustn’t… he doesn’t…”

Her voice trails off. She swallows, the movement fast and almost painful seeming. Ace waits patiently. She’ll tell him what he needs to know when she’s ready.

“This isn’t. The first time. It’s not—” Clench and release, over and over on her legs. He wants to reach out and take her hands. Let her bruise him instead, but he can’t.

He can’t do much of anything except sit here and take it. And wait for her to raise her head and glare at him with all the anger she won’t show Smoker.

“I have to deal with it myself. It would be a loss of face for him if I didn’t.”

“Just him?” he says softly and her face… crumples, tearing down the anger until there’s nothing left but hurt.

And then her mouth twists and even that’s gone. She locks it down and her mouth firms back up and she sits up straight. Hands braced on her knees, back like a ruler, chin tip-tilted up so high her glasses are sliding off her hair.

“Portgas-san. Fight me!”

It’s not what he expected, although he probably should have. He’s heard the story, and from Sanji, not Zoro. He thinks it’s mostly accurate, aside from the part that involves Zoro attacking unprovoked a helpless female. He's pretty sure it was provoked and that it wasn't Zoro attacking. And anyone who looks at Tashigi and sees anything resembling helplessness has serious issues.

“I have another name,” he says. “I keep asking you to use it.”

“Ace-s-s- _san_.” She looks miserable and defiant and Ace wants to go find that stupid, mind in the gutter bastard and roast him alive over a slow flame.

“Ace-san,” she says again, steady this time, and quiet. “My name is Tashigi. Please.” She picks Boufuu up and holds it out, offering it to him. “Fight me.”

She swallows continuously, breathing in gulps like she’s crying. Her eyes are dry. He has no doubt they’ll stay that way.

Reluctantly he comes back up onto his knees and reaches out with both hands, palms up. “All right Tashigi-kun. Get your Shigure and I’ll do my best to give you a run for your money. I’m warning you right now, though. I’m no Roronoa.”

She’s smiling, even laughing a little when she lays Boufuu in his hands.

Ace is pretty sure he isn’t smiling _or_ laughing, but then he’s only really sure of one thing. If anything happens to her Smoker’s going to kill him.

\--

He wasn’t lying when he told her he didn’t know much about swords, even if he does know how to use one. Competent is probably the best word for his swordsmanship, although Hawk-Eyes, Roronoa and Tashigi would probably have some other words for it, all of them negative at best and derogatory at worst.

The katana isn’t his weapon. Even before he ate his fruit he never carried one. The bo and knife are his weapons of choice, the ones he’ll choose if he has a choice, or they were until his fire took precedence. But if he’s wearing seastone and sword is all he has, he won’t complain.

Or he wouldn’t have four hours ago. That was before he offered himself up as Tashigi’s sparring partner.

Now he's slippery with sweat, his muscles pulling and stretching in ways he isn't used to; if he wasn’t fire he’d be hurting. Even so, he’s not used to fighting with just his human body, no help from his logia. He's using only defensive moves, too, which doesn't come easy for him; it uses a set of muscles he's not used to using. He hasn’t felt this kind of purely muscular burn since before he ate his fruit, and anything he's feeling, Tashigi has to be feeling more, if only because she's completely human.

But she’s still on her feet. Still ready to come at him one more time.

She doesn’t look away from him, doesn’t react to anything but his movements. They’ve attracted the attention of the crew; the deck around them is empty but upper deck is full of watchers. He hasn’t looked up but he can hear them up there; he can feel their eyes.

Tashigi doesn’t seem to know they’re there. Her eyes are huge, endless behind her glasses, and there’s nothing in them but Ace.

“Attack me! How can I get stronger if you won’t come at me?!” She stands braced and panting, sweat dripping down her face, glasses slipping down her nose. Her hands are as steady on Shigure’s hilt as they were when they started.

“Ace-san!” Loud enough to be heard on the other end of the ship, it’s a challenge, a warning, and her blade is dipping down— “Please don’t hold back. Attack me with all your strength!”

And that’s it. He can't listen to that catch in her voice anymore, something's going to break if she doesn’t—

“Tashigi. Stand down.”

It’s a measure of how relieved he is to hear Smoker’s voice that the weirdness of last night’s conversation, or whatever it was, is a twinge of discomfort rather than a full on wrench.

He lowers Boufuu; steps back and to the side and almost trips over the sheathe -- when did he knock it over? He stares down at it for a few seconds, then he bends down. Almost trips again but he catches himself and then he’s straightening back up, sheathing Boufuu as respectfully as he can.

Across from him the tension drains out of Tashigi in a rush. Shigure droops and she sways, blinking at something behind Ace and off to the side – he’s guessing Smoker.

“Sir.” Tashigi blinks again. Looks down at herself and her sword as though she’s not sure how she or it got here, then sheaths Shigure. The slide of steel into silk and leather is loud in the absence of human sound.

Smoker steps past Ace without looking at him and stands between him and Tashigi. “If you’ve had enough exercise there’s a pile of paperwork to fill out before we dock. Get cleaned up and get started on it.”

“Yes sir!” As she comes to attention, three seamen clatter onto the deck and stop, almost piling into each other when Smoker turns his glare on them.

They come to rigid attention, “Sir!” And then they face Tashigi and salute.

Ace isn’t positive but he thinks maybe a little over four hours ago they were on the upper deck listening to an idiot running his mouth off.

Tashigi ignores them. She steps forward, bows as deeply to Ace as she does to Smoker. Then she straightens, salutes and turns on her heel, walking past the saluting men as though they’re not there.

As soon as she’s gone Smoker says, “Dismissed. Get back to your posts.”

His voice isn’t particularly loud or abnormally gruff. He doesn’t sound angry. Not even annoyed. But there’s an immediate mass exodus, starting with the three amigos standing at attention.

Ace slouches against the hull and waits for the deck to clear. Then he has to wait for the upper deck to empty out. By the time the last white shirt is gone Smoker is standing next to him at the gunwale; Smoker pitches the stubs of his cigars into the sea and crosses his arms. Stares at Ace like he’s an answer Smoker doesn’t want but needs to have.

“You want to tell me what that was about?”

Not unexpected, it’s still an unwelcome question. Ace leans Boufuu against the hull. He pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead and leans back, propping his elbows on the gunwale and tipping his face up to the sun, letting the breeze cool his skin.

When he’s not half dead of seastone poisoning, he likes to think he’s an observant man. He’s had to be. He's a pirate and a commander of pirates, and if he doesn’t pay attention to what’s going on around him at all times he’s dead.

Now he’s a pirate living shoulder to shoulder with marines. Hyperawareness is twice as important.

So he’s been observing. Collecting data. He knows the ship’s schedule—the small daily routines that make up shipboard life—and he can match most voices with their corresponding faces and names. He watches the crew, listens to the rhythm of their interactions with each other. Most of all he watches Smoker.

At first he watched because that’s all he was capable of. Then he watched to learn. Then the seastone came off and he should have been watching for a chance to leave. He should have gone then, he knows. But honor is more than just a word to him. And he’s still here watching.

Learning.

The main thing he’s learned about Smoker is that he’s a good man. The navy calls him dissident and maverick, but the navy is full of bigoted, corrupt weasels who’d sell their mothers for a bump up the ranks.

That he knows from personal experience. He’s made deals with a few, met enough others to know that an honest marine officer is a contradiction in terms. And the ones who pay the most lip service to the company line are usually the worst.

Smoker doesn’t even come close, not in lip service or anything resembling the company line. From what Ace has seen, outside Mariejois and Marineford he’s an icon, a living representation of justice; everything a marine is supposed to be but usually isn’t. When the line is there to back away from or be crossed he can be counted on to do the right thing.

Like letting Luffy go more than once. Or breaking Ace out of a cell in an attempt to stop a war.

Smoker serves justice, not the navy, and real justice is _about_ doing the right thing.

Thing is, the right thing is rarely the easy thing, and it’s almost never the nice thing. He’s pretty sure that, more or less, Smoker is a fair man, but he’s not – by any stretch of even Ace’s fertile imagination – a nice man.

Which is why he’s going to tell him who, if not what or why, then sit back and watch the show.

There are claims other than honor. Other ties than blood and loyalty. Tashigi owns both him and Smoker in different but similar ways. Nakama ways.

Nakama isn’t something Ace takes lightly.

“Portgas.”

He hooks his thumbs into his pockets, unintentionally pulling his shorts down off his hipbones for the third time today. “If I had my belt, this wouldn’t keep happening. I don’t suppose you’ve got it lying around here somewhere?”

“Portgas.” Smoker sure can pack a lot of pissed off impatience into one word. “I won’t ask again.”

Ace tips his head back up. Squints up at the sun. It’s well after noon, getting on toward evening. They’ll make G-4 soon if Smoker’s right, and he usually is.

No time like the present.

“Seems like you have a guy with no manners on your ship,” Ace says. “I don’t want to interfere in an internal disciplinary matter, but I know Ensign Tashigi won’t say anything, no matter how upset she is.”

Smoker’s eyes narrow. He pulls two clipped cigars from his jacket and, still staring at Ace, lights them. “We took on a couple of new people two islands before Marineford.”

Ace slants a glance at him then resumes his contemplation of the sky. “A warrant officer. Bosun, maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Just enough power to make him think he should have more. Can’t control his mouth. Disrespectful of his superior officers. Maybe he moves around a lot. Doesn’t stay at any one post long.”

Smoker flicks thick ash away. “Been going through my files lately?”

“Nope. Whitebeard's second commander, remember? It's not just there to look nice on a wanted poster. I've been running some kind of crew since I was seventeen. I know the type.”

It gets him a sharp look, followed by what might be grudging respect. “Figure you do.” He hesitates. “Portgas.”

Ace cocks his head attentively. Those cigars are really getting used and abused today, but better them than him.

“You’re right,” Smoker says gruffly. “She—”

The struggle on his face is quality entertainment and then some. Ace would let it go on for as long as it lasts but he wants a shower and Smoker has other things he should be doing. Ace counts down twenty seconds before he puts him out of his misery. “Don’t give yourself a hernia, old man. You’re welcome.”

Grunts are useful noises. They can mean almost anything. “I’ll do some reading,” Smoker says.

“You do that,” Ace says. “And maybe think about finding me a belt while you’re aground. Steel buckle. A big A would be nice.”

It’s almost a laugh. “Don’t push it, kid.”

“But I do it so well.” He pushes away from the hull and smirks deliberately at Smoker. Jerks a thumb at Boufuu, still leaning against the hull. “Make sure Ensign Tashigi gets that, will you? And thank you for your consideration.” The angle of his bow is precisely calculated. Somewhere, Makino is smiling.

He walks away before Smoker can spoil the moment.

Anyway, he needs to get clean. Tashigi is one hell of an opponent and he’ll be sure to tell her that. Later.

\--

When he gets out of the head, G-4 is in sight. He goes to his cabin and stays there. Picks up the novel he borrowed from whoever left it in the mess, flops down on his berth and tries to read.

The only thing that puts him to sleep faster than a plate of food is a book. And the only reliable thing about narcolepsy he knows of is that he never remembers falling asleep. This time is no exception.

 

 **day 13**  
He wakes up in tomorrow.

It could still be yesterday – it’s pitch black outside the porthole – but his body is used to counting down the hours for him and it’s telling him he’s sitting in his bunk a few hours after midnight, coming on dawn.

He could go back to sleep, probably. He’s always been able to sleep whenever, wherever he wants, and also many times and places he doesn’t want. But his body is also telling him it’s had enough sleep. And he doesn’t really feel like lying around waiting for daylight.

He starts to reach for the lamp before he remembers he doesn’t have to anymore, and by then his hand has bumped into something that wasn’t in the cubby when he passed out, knocking it down onto the deck.

Fire comes without thought, flaring from his fingers and his hair. Throwing shadows across the deck; across what’s lying on it, dark and puddled like spilled ink.

It’s black, not orange. There are no beads. No yin-yang faces or cow skull choker.

Other than that, it’s the same. He leans down and picks it up, holds it up to the light of his fire and turns it slowly. Examines it from all angles.

Thinks about how it got into his cabin.

Tashigi could have left it, he supposes. But he knows she didn’t.

She never walks in on him. Always knocks and then waits for him to invite her in, as though she’s embarrassed by the memory of her enforced invasions during those days when he was still chained up in Smoker’s cabin.

If she was behind the hat in his hands she’d have given it to him in daylight. Probably somewhere outside where she could make a quick escape, along with an embarrassed bow and a pink flush.

Anyway, he’d have known if someone had opened the door. His fire would have known.

The porthole is open. Besides him there’s only one person who even _could_ come in that way.

Ace swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up, shaking his shorts straight as he does. He told Smoker he wanted them to sleep in, and he does. That way he’s already in them when he gets up.

His slides he leaves where he last kicked them off, walks past them to the port on bare feet. He doesn’t need them. The deck is worn smooth and he’s fire.

And there won’t be anyone but Smoker around to see.

\--

Since the cuffs came off there’s been… something. A growing awareness somewhere inside his fire.

It’s not something he thinks about or uses deliberately; it’s just there inside him, telling him where Smoker is at a given moment.

That in itself is something he doesn’t want to think about, so he files it under logia calling to logia and leaves it alone. Or as alone as he can with Smoker’s constant, low-grade presence nagging somewhere near the back of his mind. It doesn’t help that that weird _thing_ night before last only made it worse, to the point that the closer he is to Smoker the more he feels like he has fire ants crawling around under his skin.

From a practical standpoint it means he never has to worry about Smoker appearing on top of him without warning, which will probably come in handy someday, even if being a weathervane for smoke logia has never been one of his ambitions. Right now, though, he doesn’t need his fire to tell him where Smoker is. The steady drift of cigar smoke from the stern is enough.

Trying to sneak up on him would juvenile and probably pointless. Another day Ace might do it anyway, even though he's pretty sure the logia awareness goes both ways. He’s noticed that Smoker hasn’t been keeping as close an eye on him as before. Thought it might be a sign of acceptance if not trust, but maybe it’s only a sign that Smoker has a more reliable way of checking up on him.

Doesn't matter. That kind of prank takes a certain frame of mind, and right now Ace isn't in it. He's not even standing next to it.

His bare feet make slick slapping noises on the deck. Not loud, but he’s not trying to be quiet, either. He’d like to make this easy on someone – preferably him – but he doubts Smoker is going to cooperate.

All he can do is keep walking; turn the corner of the aftercastle and see darkness settling into shadow around the red butts of Smoker’s cigars. Ace can’t see _him_ , really, but he can guess from the angle and the cigars’ positioning that he’s leaning against the bulkhead.

If at all possible Ace prefers to face his problems head on. Swinging the hat on its string he crosses the deck and leans against the hull across from Smoker. Turns the hat over in his hands while he thinks about what he wants to say.

More like what _doesn’t_ he want to say, but that list would take forever to run through. He settles for, “Do you ever think about the difference?”

Smoker’s reply is slow in coming. Slow enough that Ace is starting to think he’s going to ignore him when he finally says, “What difference?”

“Between pirates and marines.”

It could be a laugh. A really gritty one, Smoker style. “All the time, pirate.”

“I mean,” Ace continues as though Smoker hadn’t spoken, “there’s most pirates. And then there’s Luffy and his nakama. Shanks and Pops. Then,” he says before Smoker can say something inflammatory, “there’s most marines. Like that shithead yesterday.”

He’s looking down at the hat in his hands. He keeps looking at it. Keeps turning it over and over again, stiffened felt edges a soft, continuous scrape across his fingertips. He says, “And then there’s you. Ensign Tashigi. Granddad. Maybe even Aokiji.”

There’s not much wind, but what little there is feels good on his skin; it’s good to feel his own heat flare up beneath the cool of it. He wonders if heat is something Smoker feels or if he’s as dead to sensation as cold ash.

“Two sides, same coin.” His hair falls down into his face when he turns his head, ticklish and annoying on his skin. He shoves it back and says, “We’re not all that different. Pirate is just a word. So’s marine. It’s what you do with it that matters.”

Cigar tips flare briefly then bank. A fresh drift of smoke wafts toward Ace. He slides down the hull to avoid it, ending on his ass with his back propped against the hull and his knees crooked. He hooks the hat over his right knee and tips his head back, watching smoke spiral upward.

Strangely, or maybe not, he’s never cared much for the smell of burning tobacco. The smell of Smoker’s cigars is almost pleasant, though: spicy and light enough not to be overpowering. It would be… easy to get used to.

“I didn't hear your name in there,” Smoker says.

He opens his eyes. Hadn’t realized he’d closed them, and he has to focus on the words to make them make sense. “What about it?”

“Where do you fit in?”

Ace laughs out loud, rolling his head against the hull. “You just said it yourself, Commodore. I’m a pirate. If I wasn't a devil fruit user, I probably wouldn't be half as well known. If I wasn’t Straw Hat’s brother and one of Whitebeard’s lieutenants _you_ wouldn’t bother to separate me out from the rest. I’m not that special.”

It gets him a huff of smoky disbelief, but nothing else; Smoker doesn’t seem inclined to comment. In fact it takes him so long to answer that Ace is caught off guard when he does. “Someone thinks you are.”

Just that fast, that easy, he’s drowning. Sitting out on the deck in miles of air and he’s ten fathoms under. Can't move. Can't breathe.

“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Smoker says. “Why you matter so much. You're a big name but Impel Down has bigger in its guts.” Ace wills him to shut up but he just keeps going, sounding more like he’s thinking aloud than talking to Ace.

“They end criminals with hundreds of kills behind them in Impel Down every day without witnesses. You they want to put on top of a platform in Marineford, pull in most of the Fleet and set up a live broadcast. It's not just an excuse to go after Whitebeard, either, Sengoku would've done the same thing regardless."

 _shut up shut up shut up_

"Not an execution, a damned three-ring circus. Just like—"

He stops trying not to listen and waits for him to put it together. It won’t take long. Smoker is an intelligent man.

Not long at all. Just enough for cigar butts to flare up again. For a cloud of smoke to blow away on a quick breath not taken on purpose.

“Idiot,” Smoker’s ash and gravel voice comes out of the dark.

Ace’s mouth wants to twitch. He's not in any kind of mood to let it. “A lot of people would agree with you.”

“Not you, moron. I should have seen it.” The crunch of chewed up cigars is unmistakable.

“You’ve got a couple of bad habits there, Commodore. You should probably give them up for your health.”

“Shut up.” But the grinding noise stops. “Who knows?” Smoker barks.

Ace has never felt less like smiling and it’s too dark for Smoker to see, even if he did. He forces one anyway, more for routine familiarity than anything else. “I thought you wanted me to be quiet.”

The grinding starts up again. “Portgas.”

“Garp, Luffy, Shanks, Pops.” Dadan. _Sabo._ “Someone high up in the marines, probably.”

“Yes.”

He only talks to fill silence when he’s trying to distract someone. His ingrained instinct has always been to keep his mouth shut, but he learned long ago from Luffy that sometimes random stupidity works better than all the stoicism in the world.

But sometimes in some places silence works best. If he’s fishing for answers, anyway.

“Sengoku knows,” Smoker says. “What he knows, Kong knows.” Not even close to a question.

Ace rearranges the hat sitting on his knee so that the brim is tilted up at him. Kind of like his knee is wearing it. “I’d say.”

“They’re going to make damned sure the whole world sees the last of Roger die.”

There's something close to disgust in Smoker’s voice. Ace’s stomach turns over just hearing it. At the thought that he’s any part of that guy.

He thinks Smoker moves then. Closer or farther away he's not sure, he just hears boots scrape the deck. Smoker says, slowly, “If you’re Roger’s then Straw Hat—”

“I’m not,” Ace interrupts. “He sired me, but he’s not my father. Whitebeard is, the same way Shanks is Luffy’s dad.” If he concentrates, he can hear the beat of his pulse over the sound of the ocean. Over the sound of his voice.

“The same way Luffy’s my brother.”

It’s never truly silent on an ocean-going ship. There’s always someone awake to make noise, the creak of the ship, and the sounds of the ocean itself. But there is a kind of silence innate to darkness. There are degrees of silence and Smoker has several perfected. Ace takes this one as permission to go on. More likely a demand for more intel.

“We grew up together. Luffy and me. The way we grew up…” _Roger’s kid? It’d be a demon that didn’t deserve to live._ “It was pretty weird, I guess. I didn’t really think about it while it was happening. I didn’t get how weird until later.”

 _It’d be a shame if you died here. If you still want to raise hell, take my name. Be my son and run wild across the sea as much as you like._

Ace swallows hard, swallows… pride, regret, he doesn’t even know. He just knows he should shut up. Right now. But he can’t, something won’t let him now that he’s started. The words keep coming, welling up from somewhere inside him, and Smoker isn’t about to stop him.

“Me, I could understand why. Granddad – Garp promised Mom before I was even born. Said he’d give me a chance to start out clean.”

Clean? Yeah, no, but Dadan… Dadan. His, even if he never said it. Hers, even if she didn’t want him to be.

He raises his head and looks up at the changing sky. Lets himself feel east as a place instead of a direction, pulling him back. “I was an obligation. He didn’t have the time or the ability to keep me around even if he’d wanted to. That’s not what pisses me off.”

Breathing is easy. In, out. Out, in. All he has to do is shut down everything else, breathe without feeling, speak without thinking.

“He did the same thing to Luffy. Dumped him on people who didn’t want him like he was a pile of secondhand clothes. I love that old bastard. I always will. But I’ll never forgive him for that.”

He wishes Smoker would say something. Anything to shut him up. “Luffy’s father—that’s for him to say. But people like that guy and Roger...”

Breathing _now_.

“You can’t choose to be something you’re not. I know that, I’ve tried.” Still not looking at Smoker. “Can’t, but even if I could I’d still want to be built the way I am. I’d still want to be Whitebeard’s son. Luffy’s brother.” Sabo’s brother.

Smoker’s shadows are quiet. Ace can’t even hear him breathing.

Ace is breathing. He just has to keep doing it. For now. Just for today. “It’s really easy to lose the people you give a damn about,” he says and laughs (breathes), and he can see Luffy so clearly it’s almost like he’s standing between Ace and Smoker, shouting at him across time.

 _Ace! Ace, I’m not angry anymore! Shanks says it’s stupid to get angry about stuff like that. Let’s be friends!_

It scares him now, thinking about all the times he tossed Luffy off a bridge, tipped a boulder over on him. Stood there and watched while things big enough to eat sea kings fought over who got to eat him. If he’d been anything but rubber Ace would have lost him before he even knew he had him.

It makes him want to see Luffy right now. Make sure he's okay. Makes him wonder if he’ll ever see him again, maybe because he wants to so much; right now he thinks he wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything except for the way he used to want Sabo to climb into the fort some night, crawl in between him and Luffy and still be there and alive and real when they woke up.

A curl of smoke plumes upward, catching his eye. “Make your point if you have one,” Smoker says.

Ace fakes a laugh. It sounds like the bad imitation it is. He lifts the hat off his knee. Lays it down on the deck and stands, facing Smoker.

“Thank you for the consideration you’ve shown an enemy.” He bows low enough to show respect without disdainful exaggeration. “Thank you for keeping an eye on Luffy. You can call it chasing if it makes you feel better. Same difference.”

He expects Smoker’s disgusted growl; it makes him smile.

He doesn’t expect Smoker to be right in front of him when he straightens, the scowl on his face clear in growing light. Dawn’s coming. Coming fast.

Before he can move, say something annoying, _anything_ , Smoker’s hand is gripping his chin. Tilting his head back. Smoker’s eyes narrow into their usual annoyed expression, ash grey turned dark, slate blue in reddish light.

“You’re not like him,” he says abruptly, like Ace isn’t what he should be and that pisses him off.

Ace swallows his unwanted, unasked for gratitude. It’s better than thanking Smoker again. “That’s what Pops said.”

Smoker’s grip tightens briefly; if Ace was completely human it would probably hurt. And Smoker is still staring at him, maybe looking for whatever it is people think they'll see when they look at the pirate king's brat. Eventually he either finds it or he doesn't. Eventually his hand loosens… lets go. “No one’s ever accused Newgate of stupidity.”

“Shanks,” Ace says. He’s responding on automatic. His mind feels like it won’t be able to catch hold of a thought ever again. “Shanks does sometimes.”

Smoker snorts. “Nobody’s ever accused Red Hair of anything but guts and a mouth that won’t quit.” He steps back from Ace, stops a few feet away and plants his feet. Crosses his arms. “Your idiot brother is Roger all over again. You’re something else. What do you want from me, Portgas?”

“What?”

Smoker’s lip curls, arching up over his cigars. “You wouldn’t have started this if you didn’t want something.”

And he knows he should have seen it coming. Yeah, he should have. Smoker is the suspicious bastard to end all suspicious bastards; it’s as impossible to sneak up on his brain as it is the rest of him.

But he guesses there’s an upside if he looks hard enough. If nothing else it spares him having to work up to it. So he says, “I want you to take me back.” Without preamble or presentation; he says it the way Smoker might have if Smoker was ever stupid enough to dig himself in this deep.

And then he thinks maybe the world stops. Or ends.

Because it feels like everything changes in the time it takes him to say seven words; the world he’s standing in isn’t the same as it was even ten seconds ago and everything is new, him included. Smoker is the only thing left from before.

“What the hell,” Smoker says, “is wrong with you?”

Ace’s foot bumps the hat. He slides it gently away before he looks up at Smoker. “I’ve caught some of the incoming from the den-den shack. Don’t get pissed at Miu,” he says before Smoker can start blowing smoke, among other things, “she lets me sit with her sometimes, but only when it’s quiet. I can listen at portholes when I need to.”

“I should chain your ass back down,” Smoker says through gritted teeth and chewed up tobacco.

He laughs. “You could try. My point is there are a lot of conflicting orders getting thrown around because of me. Eventually something’s going to give and a lot of people are going to die.” He meets Smoker’s eyes as well as he can in the poor light. “On both sides.”

“That’s war.”

“Yeah,” Ace says, “it is. I thought this was about stopping a war. Now I’m wondering if it’s about starting one.”

“Don’t start thinking now, Portgas.”

“I am thinking.” Maybe for the first time in half a year. “And I think you were right. I’ve been chasing Teach too long.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Pops thought so too.”

The noise Smoker makes is a lot like the one the last guy Ace punched in the gut made.

He grins. “Surprised? You shouldn’t be. The old man’s got brains and he gives a damn about us. He didn’t want me to go at all. Said he had a bad feeling. I let my pride get in the way.”

“No shit.” There’s enough irony in Smoker’s voice to cover ten suspicious bastards.

Ace feels his smile start to slide away; he holds on to it for the sake of holding on. “This,” he waves his hand at Smoker, at the situation in general, “this is my own damned fault.” And now his smile is cracking right down the center; he can feel it happening, so he lets it go. Lets it fall the rest of the way down.

“My mess to clean up.”

Smoker is still looking at him like he’s some new, not very interesting variety of sea slug. “And you think dying will do that.”

Ace shrugs. “I’ve had a good run. No regrets. And I’m not an innocent. I’ve killed.”

“Pirates.”

“And marines. And anyone else who tries to hurt me and mine.” His hands fist inside his pockets. “Don’t make me something I’m not, old man. I torched an island once.”

“Hardly,” Smoker snorts. “And after it was empty. I read that report. Eyewitness accounts, one of them from a five year old girl who got picked up before a building could fall in on her by, quote, a fire boy.”

He shouldn’t be able to blush, he’s _fire_ , but he can feel his cheeks heating. “I don’t murder children. Guess I'm one up on the marines there.”

Smoker's clenched jaw is as close to acknowledgement as Ace is probably going to get; the shadow of disgust is back on his face, curling his lip. “Not kids. Just deserters.”

Teach. Ace turns his head. The sun is rising, spilling red and orange and gold across the sea’s choppy surface. “He’s still out there,” he says. “He’s probably looking for me.”

Smoker’s voice is closer than it was before. “I’ll deal with Teach.”

“No you won’t!” He jerks back around and he doesn’t need Smoker’s warning growl to lower his voice. “You can’t. You saw what he did to me. He’ll do the same thing to you. No,” he says when Smoker opens his mouth. “Just let me say this. Then you can yell at me. Let me say it.”

Smoker’s jaw looks like stone. His eyes might as well be. “I’ve been listening to you yap for half an hour and I still haven’t heard anything worth hearing.”

“I guess I asked for that,” Ace says, and pushes his hair out of his face again. It’s why he started wearing a hat. He got tired of his stupid hair getting in his eyes. “Look,” he says, one more point for effort, “just take me back. I’ll go quietly.”

“I’m under orders. As soon as those orders change I’ll put you on the goddamn platform myself.”

“You don’t follow orders you don’t want to follow! Even pirates know that!” He’s going to throw a punch. His hands are out of his pockets, clenched up and he wants to hit Smoker, hit _someone_ , so he turns and walks to the other side of the deck. He has to move or he _will_ punch Smoker and then the shit will really hit the fan.

He doesn’t stop until the hull gets in his way. He presses himself up against it, grips the gunwale and breathes until he can think through the red wall in his brain. It’s always been this way. Things matter too much and he can’t ease back from them. He can’t make himself care less.

He didn’t _want_ to care about Sabo and Luffy. Doesn’t want to care about anyone else. But not caring didn’t work before. He doesn’t know why he thought it would now.

His hands are starting to hurt. He has to go fire or let go, so he lets go. Turns without looking up and walks, counting the scars on the deck, back over to Smoker.

He hasn’t moved. He’s still standing there like some kind of stone effigy with the hat lying a few feet away.

“Some things are worse than war,” Ace tells the deck. “I think Teach may be one of them.”

He looks up. “As long as I’m out here…” Today. Just for today. “As long as I’m running around free Pops and Luffy, Tashigi and your crew—” You. “They’re targets. Everyone's targets."

His palms sting. He pulls his nails out of them. Raises them and watches fire rise to fill the gouges. “If I go back, give them their circus. Let them kill what’s left of Roger,” swallowing, swallowing, and nothing can make it taste like anything but what it is, “then maybe they’ll leave Pops alone.”

The watch is changing. The rigging creaks and there are low voices from above. Footsteps on another deck.

“He's never wanted One Piece,” he says into Smoker’s silence, “We just want it for him. Sometimes I think he knows where it is. He and Roger…” He shuts his eyes, pushes his way past too many thoughts, emotions he can’t parse. “He liked Roger. Still calls him an honorable enemy. He says sometimes that’s almost as good as nakama.”

“And your brother?”

Luffy _is_ a smile, a real one, stretching his mouth wide. “He’s gonna be the pirate king.” He can hear the surety in his voice. The same surety Luffy has. “I’ve always known that, even when I didn’t believe it.”

Smoker’s mouth twists around his cigars and then Ace’s head is bouncing off the deck, bright white red, blood and fireworks in his eyes, vertigo blue in his throat and gut, pulling him down onto the deck and pinning him there, seastone sick and Smoker on the other end of it.

“Idiot.” Ace tries to buck up, tries to jerk free, but the jitte doesn’t move. “You and your brother. Dumbest pair of pirates on the Line.”

He goes limp, staring up at the sky, arms flung out. “All you—” He chokes, gasps, has to start over. “Push a little harder. ‘S all… all it would take.”

“I’m following orders,” Smoker growls. “And my orders are to keep you alive for now.”

“Who wanted me out?” He chokes again. Coughs some more. “Garp?”

The jitte presses in. Breath rasps in and out, overloud. Smoker’s.

Ace’s heartbeat lives in his throat, shudders against the seastone thing pressed against it. Like he’s tasting, swallowing them both, heartbeat and seastone.

“No,” Smoker says. And then the jitte is gone and Ace is coughing, rolling onto his side.

The deck is cool under his cheek. He breathes and hurts. Breathes. Lets his fire warm him from the inside out.

Something clicks: Smoker’s lighter. The smell of his cigars drifts downward, familiar and oddly comforting. “If you go back you’ll die for the sake of a man who’s been dead longer than you’ve been alive. Then they’ll go after Whitebeard and that stupid brother of yours if Whitebeard and Strawhat don't come after them first. It's a tossup. You know that. You’re an idiot, Portgas, but not that much of an idiot.”

Part of him knows Smoker is right. Most of him. But the part that always wants him to step between what’s his and the rest of the world doesn’t want to listen. “I’ll go by myself,” he mumbles. “Turn myself in at the next marine outpost.”

“Not if I put you back in cuffs you won’t.”

He rolls over onto his back and looks up at Smoker. He’s facing the ocean, elbows braced on the gunwale. Early morning sun outlines him in red, blacks the rest of him out. Everything but the cigar butts.

Ace pushes himself into a sitting position and leans back against the hull. Swallows gingerly. “You may not have put it all the way through, but damn. That stuff leaves bruises, you know? Big purple ones that go all green and gross.”

Something like laughter, or maybe it’s just another snort. “Quit whining.”

“Yeah, sure. Mock the abused prisoner.”

“Shut up before I make you, Portgas.”

“Touchy. I’ll just be over here shutting up. Any time now. I’m serious.”

“If you can still talk, I didn’t hurt you enough.”

“I love you too, Commodore.” And that _is_ a laugh. Satisfied, Ace settles himself comfortably, spine curved to fit the hull, his hands open and loose. The hat is a cord’s length away. He hooks his finger through it, pulls it toward him and picks it up. “So. New bosun?”

“She seems competent enough.”

He’s not leaning against Smoker. His arm and shoulder are just sharing space with Smoker’s leg. "Next stop on this cruise. I don't think I caught it."

"Didn't throw it."

Heh. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, Commodore, would you mind sharing the heading on your recently acquired eternal pose?"

"An island."

He gives up. It's not that important. He'll find out when they get there. Feeling like half a smile and the back end of the week from hell combined, he stretches his legs out and rolls his shoulders back. Feels smooth wood and worn denim rub up against his bare skin. Does it again for the scratchy comfort of it.

“It’s a good hat,” he says. And puts it on.

 

 **day 16**  
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ace-san.”

“Hold on a second.” He finishes fastening the strand of wooden beads he just bought around the crown of his hat, then he plops the finished result on his head and grins at her. “Does it work?”

“I already told you what I think!” she hisses, darting a look around them. “You’re too recognizable!”

Ace sighs and hooks his thumbs into his pockets. “I’m wearing jeans. And a shirt. I feel like I’m in a steam bath.”

He flaps the shirt in question, trying to get some more air circulation for his skin. Unbuttons another button, even though half of them are already undone. “It’s not a big deal. Just the beads and they’re darker than the other ones and on a black hat. Who’s going to look at me and think Fire Fist?”

Her mouth a tight line, Tashigi points wordlessly at his middle.

Ace looks down at his other purchase of the day and grins again. “I can’t believe they had one with an A on it.” He tips his head with its shadowing hat back the better to admire his new belt. “I may like this one better than the old one.”

“It looks just like the old one!”

He cocks his head to the side and tucks his tongue in his cheek. “You know, if you’re worried about attracting attention you might want to take a look at yourself.”

She looks down at herself. “What’s wrong with me?”

Nothing on the face of it. She’s wearing jeans and a faded Doskoi Panda t-shirt, the universal off duty uniform for marines, pirates and civilians alike. Shigure is strapped to her back, yes, but a pirate might wear her sword that way.

The problem isn’t the way she’s dressed, it’s Tashigi. The way she strides instead of walking. Her marine-perfect posture. And her expression caps everything else off. She’s marine, _Smoker’s_ marine from the forgotten glasses on top her head to her toes, and it shows.

She’s also right. He’s got his own glass house and it’s just bad manners to start chucking rocks at hers.

Ace glances ruefully back down at his belt. “We need to face it,” he says. “We may not be the worst undercover operatives ever but we still suck.”

Tashigi giggles, then immediately claps her hand over her mouth and stares at him over it, eyes wide.

Ace throws his head back, laughing. “The look on your face, Tashigi-kun.”

“Stop that!”

Red as a tomato bug and twice as cute. “Don’t worry about it,” he tells her. “I figure your boss already knows how much we suck, and he sent us anyway.” Hooking his arm over her shoulders, he turns them toward the street. “Let’s go find out why we’re down here.”

She nods and he squeezes once and lets go. They start walking again, swerving out to either side to avoid a passing group of seamen, and he says, “This guy got a name?”

She shakes her head. “A tall man with grey hair and a long rifle. That’s what Com—I mean Smoker-san said.”

It’s a nondescript description: it could fit any number of men anywhere. Combined with the circumstances, though, it pings something in the part of Ace’s brain that’s always alert to trouble. In general he listens closely to that part of himself; it’s gotten him out of any number of bad situations before. And he’d pay more attention to it this time if what he’s thinking wasn’t so impossible.

But it _is_ impossible and he’s just going to go ahead and keep following Tashigi around. He would have even if Smoker hadn’t asked... okay, no. Even if Smoker hadn't _told_ him to. The area they’re in isn’t a good one and the low, dilapidated building Tashigi pauses in front of has seen many better days.

She grabs his just-long-enough-to-hide-his-tattoo sleeve, pulling him to a stop with her. “Sea King’s Head. I think this is it.”

Ace looks dubiously up at the faded sign, which is – yeah, it’s a wooden carving of a severed sea king’s head. A jaggedly severed sea king’s head. “Charming. You sure this is the right place?” He doesn’t like the look of it.

It’s not only that it’s situated near the wharves in the pirate part of town, it’s also just…

“This is it, I’m sure of it,” Tashigi says.

Ace pushes his hat back. “It’s a dump. And a fire trap. Trust me on that.”

She tugs on his arm, her next breath an exasperated huff. “We’re not staying here, we’re meeting someone in the tap room. Are you coming with me or not?”

He opens the door for her. She walks past him with her chin up and her arms crossed. Shaking his head, grinning, he starts to follow her in but she stops just inside the foyer, so abruptly he almost runs into her.

With his hands braced to keep Tashigi from falling or tripping and taking them both down, the door thumps closed behind them. He steadies both of them and peers around at her face, his hands still on her shoulders “Tashigi-kun?”

The only answer he gets is a deep gasp of breath. She’s sucking air in choppy jerks, her gaze fixed on something on the left hand wall.

At first Ace can’t figure out what it is she’s seeing. It looks like a coat rack to him. Then he looks closer and it’s a coat rack comprised of sword hilts driven into the wall. “Oh shit,” he says involuntarily just as the manager appears, oiling his way into the room and smiling.

“Good afternoon and welcome to the Sea King’s Head. I see our wall of swords has captured your attention. In Gol D. Roger’s day this inn was patronized by many famous pirates. The owner was himself a pirate and a swordsman of some note. He collected the swords of the men he killed, as you see.” He gestures toward the wall of swordly shame.

Ace is starting—no, he’s already got a really bad feeling. It’s just getting worse, and Tashigi is still staring. “Did—” Her shoulders are shaking under his hands. “Did he—?”

“Oh no,” says the manager, oblivious to approaching danger. “He kept them in his private study. But soon after he killed his last opponent his luck went bad. He died violently, I can’t recall exactly how. In any case, when I acquired this place the swords were still here. I thought they’d make a unique sort of decoration, fitting for an establishment of this kind.”

“You.” Finally she turns her head. Ace wishes she hadn’t. He can see the manager’s corresponding expression. “ _You_ drove those blades into that wall.”

“Madam, I—”

“You have dishonored those swords!”

Okay, time to go. “Excuse us,” he tells the manager, then he tightens his grip and pulls Tashigi back out the door, around two pirates and a mumbling beggar with what looks like a South Bird on his head and into the alley between the inn and the pawn shop next door. Then he holds on to her while she tries to go back.

“Let… me… go!”

“Rejected.”

Tashigi is strong. Ace is stronger. He holds on while she fights him and tries to hurt him and surprises him with some inventive swearing. Being around Smoker is good for that, at least. He holds on until she stops struggling. Stands still and stiff and panting in the circle of his arms.

“Gonna kill me if I let go?” he asks after one, two, three, four, five very long seconds.

Holding onto her is like holding onto a poker. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Ace laughs and relaxes his grip. He lets her go and she stumbles away from him, braces her hand against the inn’s wall and glares at him. “I have to go back in there! I have to—”

“You have to follow orders.” It’s the tone he uses on his division when they’re being dumber than normal. It seems to work as well on marines as it does on pirates. “And while you’re at it, ask yourself how happy Smoker’s going to be if you wreck the place.”

The hand reaching for Shigure’s hilt falters. “I—”

“You’re too easy, Tashigi-kun. Is there anything you won’t do for him?”

She lowers her hand, pushing her glasses back into place on the way down. “He wouldn’t ask me to do something I couldn’t,” she says simply.

The trust and almost Luffy-like certainty in her voice opens up something in his chest that’s been closed for close to two months.

“I know someone like that myself,” he tells her, and glances up at the sun. It looks and feels well past the half day mark: they already made a morning of it in the bazaars. “What time are we supposed to meet this guy?”

Her forehead wrinkles. “There isn’t really a set time. Smoker-san said to stay for half an hour whenever we got here then leave if he didn’t come.”

“So we just show up whenever and hope?” He shakes his head. “That doesn’t sound like your boss. He’s usually more precise than that.” A lot more. His throat is still slightly sore from having seastone rammed most of the way through it.

“I know, but—” Wrapping her arms around herself, she walks toward the mouth of the alley; stops halfway there and hesitates, chewing on her lower lip.

Stares at the mouth of the alley. The inn wall. Mouth, wall, mouth, wall, mouth, wall, Ace.

Drooping, mouth and shoulders and clawed up fingers. _Stops_ chewing and vibrating tension and then she’s walking back over to him. “Let’s go back in. I can—” Chewing again. Squaring her shoulders. “I can handle it,” she says firmly.

“Right,” Ace says. Her hands are already twitching towards Shigure. “And no. You’re not going back in there until I’m sure you’re not going to kill someone. Also—”

He looks back up at the sun. “I’m starting to get a little hungry.” He has to grin at her dumbfounded expression. “Let’s go find a restaurant.”

\--

The waitress puts the last dish down and steps back, smiling. “Can I get you anything else?”

Ace looks at Tashigi. She shakes her head. “No thanks,” he tells the waitress. “I think this should do it.”

She nods and smiles again and moves on to another table, her low-voiced inquiry blending with muted conversation.

The Singing Mackerel isn’t crowded; it’s not even half full, which Ace considers an excellent thing. It means he was able to pick a table at the back of the room and sit where he could see anyone coming in. It also doesn’t hurt that the Mackerel is a small place in an older area, and not so popular that they’re likely to attract attention.

Plus, it smelled good when they were walking by. At first Tashigi had looked askance at the cracked adobe walls and smoke-blackened ceiling beams. Then Ace had said, “It’s at least three steps up from the inn,” and steered her inside because his nose and stomach rarely steer him wrong.

Once again they haven’t failed him.

“This was a much better idea than that inn,” he says and digs into the closest bowl. It’s some kind of rice and mixed seafood dish and it smells amazing. His fork is most of the way to his mouth when Tashigi’s dazed expression catches his eye. “I’m sorry, did you want some of this?”

Her gaze wanders from Ace to the loaded table in front of him, to her own single plate and glass, then circles around again. “Do you – do you always eat like this?”

“Only when I’ve been at sea or on restricted rations for a while.” He closes his eyes while he chews; it’s not as good as Sanji’s stuff, but what is? He opens his eyes back up and smiles at Tashigi, who’s still staring at him. “You should try this. It’s good.”

“No, thank you,” she says, picking up her fork. “I’m fine.”

“If you’re worried about money, don’t. It’s on me.” Courtesy of Smoker, of course. “Your boss wouldn’t want you to starve and he told me to get what I needed.”

Actually Smoker had said, “Feed yourself if you have to but don’t do it out in the open. Either you’ll end up having to run out before you pay, or you’ll fall asleep in your food.”

But Ace figures that since he’s got Tashigi to spot him he should be all right. “Tashigi-kun.”

“Mmn?” Lips shut politely around a mouthful of food, she looks enquiringly at him.

“If I fall asleep, kick me. Hard.”

She swallows. Takes a sip of water, straightens her glasses and blinks at him. “What?”

“I have a bad habit of passing out in my food. If I do, it’s on you to wake me up. Best way to do that is to kick me.”

She blinks again. Twice, rapidly. Then her confused look clears, is replaced with a smile. She says, “I’d be happy to, Ace-san,” and puts another bite of food in her mouth.

Ace warily watches her chew. “You don’t have to look so happy about it.”

She always gets a single, deep dimple in her right cheek when she’s trying not to smile. “I’m just happy to be able to help you.” She takes another bite.

He points his fork at her. “You are a bloodthirsty woman. I mean it,” he says when the dimple deepens. “You kicked my a—my butt all over the deck yesterday and the day before and the day before that and now you can’t wait to kick me again.”

“Your swordsmanship needs work,” she says after she swallows. “It’s not good to neglect your training in a place like Grand Line.”

Ace holds up his hand. Fire spurts from his fingertips. He wiggles them and flame ripples, a red-orange wave. Tashigi’s eyes widen and she makes an abortive gesture, as though he’s a candle she wants to snuff. “Stop that! People will see.”

“No they won’t, you’re in the way.” But he lets the flames die. “You were saying something about swords?”

Too late, he remembers swords are a touchy topic at the moment. The word is hardly out of his mouth before the dimple is gone and Tashigi is looking at her plate.

“Tashigi-kun—”

“What was done to those swords is horrible. It’s—it’s a sin to treat a sword with so little respect!”

Her words come in jagged, disconnected clumps. Like she’s forgotten between one thought and the next how to put them together. Setting her fork down, she stares straight ahead, her gaze fixed somewhere near Ace’s throat. “Even an old, broken blade deserves respect. And I—” There goes her chin. “I will tear that wall down myself if I have to!”

He figured as much. Wondering why in hell Smoker had to pick that inn he says, “You won’t have to.”

She closes her mouth on whatever she was going to say. “Oh.”

“I can’t say I understand—I don’t.” His smile feels lopsided. “But I—” He glances at her and then he stops talking, fork suspended mid-gesticulation. There’s no point in continuing since Tashigi doesn’t seem to be paying attention to him anymore.

She’s staring over his shoulder, eyes wider than he’s ever seen them, and they’re usually open pretty wide.

“Tashigi-kun?”

Her pointing finger shakes slightly. Ace puts his fork down beside his plate and half turns, looking back over his shoulder, and is suddenly nose to nose with the snake dangling from the beamed ceiling.

It’s not, some part of him is noticing, that big. Not thick the way a normal boa is or enormous all over like a Jaya python. But it is very long and black and it’s staring at him.

Ace blinks. Bright blue eyes blink back. A tongue like a flame flare flickers out and the snake trills, a high rising note that sounds almost like a question.

He blinks again. Feels himself do it, but he can’t stop the reaction. He’s never heard a snake do anything but hiss. “Huh,” he says. Then, “Hi?” And reaches cautious fingers up to stroke the thing’s chin.

The snake promptly turns a fiery red from nose to tail and starts purring. Ace starts laughing. He knows what he’s dealing with now. He should have before, but he wasn’t expecting to see one, not here.

“Oi,” he says, “come down already before you burn through that beam.” There’s already a suspicious scorched smell in the air and he _knows_ it isn’t him.

The wyrum trills again, then she slithers down from the ceiling onto Ace, draping herself around his shoulders and over his lap and purring like a cat in cream. Distantly he registers the gasps and choked shouts coming from surrounding tables, but his eyes are sliding shut in the wake of welcome heat, the wyrum’s heat, rippling over his skin in a wave and he’s basking in it, warm in a way that goes beyond flesh and temperature and heat.

“What—what—”

Ace opens his eyes, looks up from the ecstatic wyrum in his lap. Tashigi’s mouth is as wide and round as her eyes, and twice as startled. “Wh-what,” she stutters, “what is—?”

“A fire wyrum,” Ace says, trailing his fingers down her back, admiring the swirling gold patterns appearing and then disappearing under his moving touch. “I’m surprised to see one here. They’re from the New World.”

“Oh.” Tashigi stops looking panicked and starts looking interested. She keeps glancing from Ace to the wyrum and back again like she can’t decide which one to watch. “Um.” She clears her throat. “Why did it… why is it… here?”

Ace obediently scratches the wyrum’s tilted chin; opalescent inner lids slide up, turning her eyes a milky blue.

“At a guess,” he says, “I probably smell and feel like home. I’ve heard some stories that say these guys evolved on a winter island and learned how to heat their blood to survive and keep their eggs warm. I think that’s a load of—”

Tashigi coughs pointedly at the ceiling. The corner of his mouth kicks up. “You get the picture. Anyway, you mostly find them on islands with live volcanoes. Not even magma can burn them – that’s what the old timers say.”

“That makes sense.” Tashigi sits back, pushing her glasses into place as she does. “Your fire,” she says, and blushes almost as bright as the wyrum. “When you say it out loud it sounds stupidly obvious. Fire logia, fire wyrum.”

“Yeah, but you’re asking the right question. Wyrum don’t last long away from their home turf. The only way to transport one is to make it so cold it goes into hibernation. Most of them die within a month.” He spreads his hand, palm flat, fingers riding the curve of a coil. The heartbeat under his hand is slow but steady. “This pretty girl shouldn’t be here.”

As though she understands him, the wyrum’s coils move restlessly. Her skin slides smooth and hot over his fingers as she shifts, looping around and resting her chin on his shoulder. He flattens his palm under her, giving her some support. Frowns at the faint evidence of scarring he can feel running the length of her belly.

“What are you doing here?” he says softly. “Why aren’t you on some hot island with a nice steady lava flow?” A low purr is his only answer.

“How do you know it’s female?” Tashigi asks.

Her voice pulls Ace out of the frozen place the wyrum must have lived in ever since she was taken from her home. “What? Oh, yeah. The males are white. When they change they’re orange with red markings. The females are black, then red and gold.”

“What makes them change?”

He’d shrug but his shoulders are fully occupied and he doesn’t want to disturb the wyrum if he doesn’t have to. “A lot of things,” he says. “Surroundings, temperature, mood… a bunch of factors. See these?” He traces one golden swirl. “That you can see them means she feels safe enough to relax.”

Tashigi is drawing patterns on the tablecloth with her forefinger in an unconscious imitation of the wyrum’s markings. “You know a lot about them.”

“You already said it,” he says. “Fire logia, fire wyrum. Hard not to be interested when you’ve got that kind of connection with something.”

“Do you—” Tashigi leans forward a little and continues hesitantly, “Do you think she’d mind if I…” Her voice trails off but Ace understands what she’s asking.

“Nope,” he says. “This one’s a glutton for attention. Oi.” He tickles the spot between recessed eye ridges. One blue eye slides open. “Wake up and pretend you have some manners.”

He extends his arm, holding it out toward Tashigi. The wyrum curls down it, pausing midway over the table with her head up, watching Tashigi with what looks like interest and no hostility.

Still with that uncharacteristic hesitation Tashigi reaches out.

“Careful,” Ace says. “She’s hot. I don’t think she’ll burn you but I’m not much of a judge.”

The wyrum’s tongue flickers out, flicking the end of Tashigi’s finger. She slides close enough to butt Tashigi’s hand with her head.

“Oh!” Tashigi turns her smile on Ace. Her fingers move over the wyrum’s skin with slow care. “She’s—she _is_ hot. Like sand in the summer. But she’s soft.” Her eyes are shining. “She’s beautiful.”

“That she is,” Ace says, and he doesn’t just mean the wyrum.

Tashigi blinks and flushes again, and somewhere off to one side someone coughs. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but I’m afraid there’s a problem.”

Ace turns his head to see the waitress hovering several yards away. Around her, the restaurant is empty. “Whoops.”

“Do you think you could take your snake outside?” Her gaze darts around the empty room before settling back on the wyrum. “Everyone, um, left, and I don’t think they’ll come back until it’s gone.” She doesn’t say if at all, but it’s implied.

Ace is about to apologize and ask her to bag the food (and also tell her that wyrum one, aren’t snakes, and two, don’t belong to anyone) when the door bangs open.

Two guys with drawn pistols run in and skid to a stop in the middle of the room, looking frantically around. The shorter one catches sight of Ace and points. “There it is!”

The other one sticks his head back out the door and yells, “Captain, it’s in here!”

The wyrum slides out from under Tashigi’s hand, retreating back across the table and settling around Ace’s shoulders. He looks down at his full plate and feels his mouth twist, half smile, half resignation. “I think I got two bites,” he says. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

\--

They’re pirates, so obvious about it it’s almost a cliché, and their captain is the worst. Crossed swords strapped to his back, a red bandana around his head and skull and crossbones on his bicep.

He stands just inside the dining room with two men flanking him on either side and glares at Ace. “You have something that belongs to me.”

Tashigi’s hand clenches around Shirgure’s hilt. “Ace-san—”

He shakes his head. “I’ve got this.” Stands and moves away from the table and the wyrum moves with him, sliding down him and coiling in a loose figure eight around his slides. He hears a chair scrape back; feels Tashigi warm and determined at his shoulder.

“Get them out,” he says softly. He can feel other people in the room, three lukewarm dots on the fringe of his awareness. Tashigi is soft blue heat, obvious to the flame rising through his veins. The wyrum is purring again.

“Hey,” the asshole across from him says. “You got a hearing problem or something?”

Ace sticks one hand in his pocket and rests the other on his hat. Takes his time looking the guy up and down before he answers, and has the satisfaction of seeing him shift nervously in place. “I’ve got a problem with rude people and slavers. You’re both.”

He is and isn’t expecting the attack. An attack, yes, but the method—

He braces his legs to keep his balance, feels the wyrum’s coils tightening around his leg. When the room stops shaking he jerks his gaze from the crater in front of him that used to be floor to the grinning pirate captain. The captain’s left arm bridges the space between him and the crater; it’s solid grey stone.

This, Ace decides, is all his day needed to be perfect. He judges the distance between the stone logia and the door; between the door and the buildings across the street. Through the windows the street looks mostly empty, probably because of the pirates. They’re standing out there in a big clump, trying to look menacing and halfway succeeding.

The idiot in front of him doesn’t know enough to spread his men out, surround anything, much less a building. Ace wonders how long he’s been a captain or a devil fruit user. He’s thinking not very on both counts. Stupidity aside, the guy doesn’t look much older than him.

Ace doesn’t have the excuses of stupidity and too little experience. This is a heavily populated area full of innocent people. He’s got one chance to get this right. And he will. He won’t accept anything else.

“They left through the back,” Tashigi says from behind him.

“You go too,” he says without turning his head. “Give my apologies to the commodore. Tell him I’ll probably be late for dinner.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Damn it, don’t argue with me! Go!”

When he feels strongly enough about something he can stop people from doing what they’re doing by wanting it enough, and sometimes by saying it. It took him a year to work up the nerve to ask Pops if he knew why, and he didn’t like the answer he got.

He still doesn’t like to use it. But sometimes he tells himself that his mom was a D too and does what he has to. Even then it doesn't always work. Fails half the time except when he really gives a damn about someone.

Tashigi _is_ strong, but Ace is desperate. The force of his desperation knocks her back into the nearest table. Out of the corner of his eye he can see her staring at him from her sprawl, face white, mouth taut and he hates that he (scared) hurt her but a few bruises are better than possible death.

He sees her lips move slowly around a word. His name, he thinks. And then she staggers to her feet and runs.

“Boy!” the captain bellows. “Give up the worm and make this easy on yourself.”

Yep. That’s going to do it. “It’s a wyrum, moron,” he says, a small corner of his brain noting that he’s been spending too much time around Smoker. He’s picking up his insults. “And that’s a no can do. Hiken!”

It’s what he is. What he does.

Blows things up and blows them out, shatters the windows and the door and sends them and the rest of the front wall to hell along with the pirates standing between him and a pleasant afternoon spent hanging with a friend he may have just scared away from him for good.

Sends them flying as high, as far and wide as he can, burning as much of the shrapnel as he can, and it’s relief, it’s so _right_ to throw his flame out, feel it explode out of him with the wyrum’s song rising around him, the heat of her fueling him, making him burn hotter better brighter cleaner _faster_.

Like he’s drinking essential flame, pure energy, and it’s an effort to pull his fire back, rein it back into him. He doesn’t want to, the wyrum doesn’t want him to, but he tears himself out of the rush, the roaring need, and then he’s standing in the middle of the decimated restaurant, the wyrum’s exultant song fading to a contented purr.

Breath coming fast, Ace looks down at her, something that feels a lot like wonder expanding out from his chest to the rest of him. “What the hell did you just do?”

She looks… healthy. Sleek and well fed, which is more than he can say for himself. Her skin is the deep red of banked coals and the golden swirls stand brightly out against it, pulsing, rippling and changing shape as he watches.

The wyrum returns his look, head cocked to one side. “Yeah, okay,” Ace says. “Come on.” She swarms up him like permission was all she was waiting for.

“Have to get moving,” he tells her as his fire rises, licking up from his skin; she’s—pulling it out of him?

Just as well. One burst of flame and an unplanned flight aren’t going to stop a stone logia for long.

He has some time. Enough to get to wherever the guy landed and neutralize him fast if he goes now. So he goes. Flames straight up through the ceiling, the wyrum’s fire wrapped around his core, bursting free of manmade restriction. Tearing through wood and skin.

What’s left of his humanity is sorry for the damage. Remembers to ask Smoker to do something about it later.

The rest of him—the rest of _them_ just burns.

\--

Everything looks different through his fire. Both more and less real.

Like tinder. Like fuel.

He doesn’t fly in this form, he leaps, crackles and expands himself out over the rooftops, only his feet solid when he has to touch down. His mind is a red, hazy thing, clouded and clear, full of her song and the burn.

He can sense the destruction he caused up ahead, burned out brick and boards and pirates strewn wide across the rice fields outlying the town. Can sense her satisfaction in fragments of smoldering wood and flesh. Living stone is the only thing left alive.

It won’t be for long. She knows who hurt her and he doesn’t even want to tell her no.

They come down over him, knock him back down, scorch the air around him. Turn it hot, unbreathable. A howl, wounded pride and fury, and stone erupts uncontrolled. Their enemy smells… young. Green.

It makes them want to do something. Something they can’t do as they are. It doesn’t matter. The flame is all and their enemy is attacking.

Stone can’t touch them and they cannot touch it. They swirl around, above it, teasing whisper of something, him, her, one of them, separate.

“Little sister, lend me your breath.”

Ignition. Heat. They, not he, not she, not alone, either, them together _this_

Together, this is. What they are. Enough to melt the earth, feel, hear it boil screaming under them.

All they are, all they know until (separation) he only, he feels _him_. Coming up from the south, match, other self. There’s satisfaction in sharing flame with this other and they flare up, meet him halfway. Reach out, surround thick billows of ash and smoke with flame, pull him in and he’s (him her them) all, all, all.

And pulling away from them, becoming other again. Doesn’t want to, he, they can feel that. Goes anyway. Streams out in all directions, blanketing ground, sky, choking off the air fire needs to breathe. Reaching in, into the heart of their inferno. Wrapping around, smothering him, her, fire song fading, doused. He feels her fear and then he can’t feel her at all. Screams and lashes out but the smoke catches him, coils into. Spreads smoke fingers all through him and wrenches him out into darkness.

\--

She’s gone. He knows that before he opens his eyes. He can’t feel her heat anywhere.

Snap-crack. Lighter, that’s… _Smoker’s_ lighter, closing. Shifting ground is his weight shifting, boots scuffing against dirt. “What the fuck was that, Portgas?”

On the ground on his back. His whole back side is wet through. The air is full of ash, scorched earth stink. Crushed, half-burned rice stalks. When he turns his head, they scrape his skin. They’re all around, under him, burn-rot acrid in his nostrils and throat.

He opens his eyes. Slowly. They’re crusted, gummed shut with smoke and tears. Has to blink them clear, water the grit away before the world comes back into focus. Blue sky streaked burn black, dead rice, Smoker standing over him looking pissed. Situation normal.

All fucked up.

He shuts his eyes again and rolls onto his side and immediately regrets it. His lungs rebel and then he’s coughing out the smoke left in them.

Palms flat on the ground, propping himself up. Kind of hurts to breathe but his lungs are clearing fast, his fire pushing away smoke. “Pirates,” he pants. “Devil fruit user. Caught me—bad place.”

“I figured.”

He pushes himself up onto his knees, and then Smoker’s hand is gripping his arm, hauling him the rest of the way up. Holding him while he gets his feet under him. Letting go the second he does.

He can feel Smoker’s gaze tracking him but there’s not enough of him present enough to care. “What was that?” Smoker repeats.

He stops looking around for his shirt – he doesn’t seem to be wearing it but his hat is still there, dangling from his neck by its cord. A little crushed but it’ll clean. Beads are still intact.

Looks over at Smoker. Suspicious eyes, always. Narrow, grey. Like clouds and stone. Like smoke. “What?”

“That wasn’t just you.”

Ace stares blankly at him. He’s not avoiding the question; blank is his current state of mind. It’s what he is.

Smoker’s lip curls. He crosses his arms and turns his suspicious smoke eyes away from Ace. “I’ll get some answers out of you later. There’s another fire.”

“What?” How many times has he said that? Feels like too many and _he_ feels slow, stupid in his body. It takes a millennium to turn his head and when he finally manages it’s a good thing the column of smoke rising from the city is obvious. “I didn’t burn it,” he says blankly. “I totaled it, but it wasn’t on fire.”

“Not your restaurant, idiot. An inn.”

“Oh.” He frowns at dark grey smoke, trying to make it make sense. “I didn’t do it,” he says again.

“No.” Smoker chews viciously on his unlit cigars. “You were too busy blowing something else up.”

Something… not right. Smoker. “Why are you here?” he hears himself ask.

“Tashigi.”

Oh. Right, that’s… he shakes himself hard, a deep water fishman coming up onto dry land for the first time. Tries to get his brain working again, to think human and not logia. “Fire. Where?”

“The wharves.”

It sparks a minor chord. “That place? We went there.” He frowns. “I think we went there… before?” The wyrum, the restaurant, the logia. Who is still alive. Badly burned, lying cuffed on the ground, groaning. “Devil fruit user,” Ace says. He’s not sure if he already said and he really thinks Smoker should know.

Smoker growls wordlessly. “Do I look stupid to you? Those cuffs used to be yours.” He wraps a hand around the back of Ace’s neck and turns him toward the town proper.

No skin. No actual point of human contact, and there’s still a shudder working its way through him. He shouldn’t feel shaky just because Smoker’s gloved hand is on his neck but he remembers—

 _smokefireunity_

He doesn’t know what he remembers. It’s tangled up in his head with his fire and Smoker’s hand is _tightening_ and Ace is suddenly aware of movement and voices behind, around them. Marines?

Blue arches on white caps. White everywhere, too much for his eyes. Marines.

Smoker’s hand tightens again. Shakes him a little. “You went there,” he says. “Then you went somewhere else and made a mess. You’re going back to clean up another mess.”

More marine white smacks him in the face: a shirt. “Put that on,” Smoker says.

“Closing the barn door after the horse,” he mutters, but he pulls the shirt on, leaving it unbuttoned.

“Get going.”

He glances back over his shoulder as Smoker shoves him forward. The wrecked field is scorched. Burned to the ground in places, but there are still high, waving strands of rice all around. She could be anywhere.

I’ll come back. He says it in his head, Smoker’s hearing is too good for anything else. Promises her and himself. As soon as he does whatever it is Smoker wants him to.

Smoker chooses that moment to give him another shove. “Move, Portgas.”

It’s not his choice. Not this time. He faces forward and moves.

\--

The inn is still standing when they get there, but the fire has a hold. He could feel the strength of the flame halfway across the town. From a block away it’s overpowering.

He shoves his hands in his pockets. Rocks back on his heels and watches the sparks fly. The owner doesn’t seem to have been paid up with the local fire brigade, but some of Smoker’s people are trying to fight the blaze, hosing the building down even though it doesn’t seem to be doing much good.

People from the surrounding buildings are out in force, watering down their own property. Killing any spark that gets too close.

“Everyone get out?” he asks.

“Yes,” Tashigi replies. “The main building was empty and no one inside the tap room was hurt.”

“Too bad. Most of them were pirates.” Smoker turns away from the raging bonfire that used to be a rundown inn and glares at Ace.

More alert now that’s he’s not half stupid with wyrum fire, he throws his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t do it,” he says for the third time. “I told you that already.”

“Sir,” Tashigi says from Smoker’s other side, “I can explain. It wasn’t Ace-san’s f—”

“I don’t give a damn whose fault it was, I want it out. Portgas?”

He thumbs his hat back and tries out a smirk. Maybe it even works. “Something I can do for you, Commodore?”

Smoker’s eyes narrow into slits. His jaw clenches, but before he can get started on Ace a wailing moan erupts from behind them. A man staggers from the closest alley and collapses to his knees on the pavement.

“Ten million belli,” he moans. “Gone, all gone.”

“I think that’s the owner,” Ace says when Smoker looks at him. “Tashigi-kun?”

She pushes her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “Yes.” Her mouth tightens. “I will never forgive him. I couldn’t forget.”

The man starts at their voices and turns his face towards them. His eyes widen and he staggers to his feet. “It was her.” Tremors shake through his body, down his arm and into the finger he’s pointing at Tashigi. “She burned it down!”

“I would never!” Stiff-legged and indignant she stalks over to him, waving her own finger in his face. “But if I had it would serve you right, treating those swords so disgracefully. This—” her finger moves away from his nose, pointing at the fire, “This is justice.”

“Justice! It’s an outrage! I’ll swear out a complaint! I’ll have you arrested! I’ll—”

“Shut up.” Smoker is lighting his cigars. The owner’s eyes bulge when he looks at him. “Are you accusing my officer of arson?”

“I—I—I—don’tthinkso?”

A cloud of cigar smoke envelops the owner. “Sure about that?”

“Yes!” No stammering this time.

“Then get lost.”

He stumbles back into the alley he just came out of without another word or even a glance at the inn. Ace drops into a crouch, rests his elbows on his knees and laughs like an idiot.

“If you’ve got time for that you’re not busy enough,” Smoker growls. “Can you handle this?”

He tips his head back and studies the fire objectively. “Should be able to. Damage feels about the same as the fleet takes during a heavy firefight.”

“Good. Tashigi.”

“Sir?”

“When he’s done put a clean-up detail together. Pull the squad back until then.” He shoves his hands in his coat pockets and starts walking away.

“Oi,” Ace calls after him. “Where are you going so fast? I _light_ fires. You’re better at putting them out.”

“Restaurant,” is the terse response. Smoker keeps walking.

Ace figures he was lucky to get that much. He doesn’t waste time looking for help he isn’t going to get. Turns, searching for Tashigi, and finds her standing a couple of yards away.

She isn’t moving. She’s staring at the burning inn, hands limp and open at her sides. Ace doesn’t have to ask what she’s thinking. “I’ll get them out,” he says.

She moves slowly, like it’s high tide and she’s caught in a rip current. Raises her head and her hair falls away from her face and he doesn’t think it’s fear he’s seeing. Knows it’s not anger.

“Ace-san.”

It’s enough.

\--

It doesn’t take long before they’re lying on the pavement in a long line: twenty-three blackened hilts and heat bright blades. Ace lays the last of them down and flickers back to flesh, settling next to Tashigi. “That all of them?”

She’s frowning at them—at one in particular, he thinks—but she looks up when he speaks. “Hm? Oh, yes. I counted twenty-three.” Her gaze drifts back toward the sword. “The makers’ marks should still be there. Once they’re rebound I may be able to return them to their true owners.”

She walks closer to the line as she speaks, finally crouching down somewhere around the middle of it.

“Something wrong?”

She shakes her head. “N-no. I don’t think so. It’s just—” Shakes her head again, harder. Shaking something off. “It’s nothing.”

“Then I should probably deal with this before your commodore gets back.”

She must have started moving when he started speaking because she stops him, her hand on his arm, before he can fully turn. “Thank you.”

He makes his smile be a smile and nothing else. “Don’t mention it.” And he’s slipping out from under her hand, flickering back to fire. Darting across the street, arcing up over the blaze then down into it.

Swallowing flame is as close as he can come to putting words to what he’s doing. He’s taking it into himself, swelling his own fire with it until he feels like a disaster looking for a place to happen, hair alive with sparks, flame ready to burst from his skin. But it’s working: the fire inside the building is dying slowly but surely.

On the periphery of dwindling flame he’s aware of Tashigi. She did as Smoker told her to and pulled the marines back, but she’s apparently not about to let Ace do this by himself. She’s wielding a hose without aid, her men clearly unhappy about it, but just as clearly not ready to go against her orders. When Ace has taken as much fire as he can he walks out of the inn, flame sloughing from his shoulders, running down his arms and spattering, dying on the ground, and wordlessly takes the hose from her.

For a moment her hands and arms hang, frozen in position. Then her hands drop and her shoulders roll back; she scrapes sweat-damp hair away from her face and pushes her glasses to the top of her head. “It’s… not out.”

The marines seem to take that as permission to move in, coming toward them in a wave of soot-blackened white.

“Getting there,” Ace says, handing the hose off to one of them. “Your boss is back.” He nods toward Smoker, who’s standing in front of the line of swords, lighting fresh cigars. “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

Tashigi gives him a reproachful look but she falls in beside him, walking back over to Smoker with him.

Smoker doesn’t look happy, which could mean almost anything. “Tashigi.”

Her head lifts. “Yes, sir?”

“This isn’t marine business.” He jerks his chin at the swords. “Take care of it on your personal time.” He glances at the inn then frowns at Ace. “I told you to get that fire out, Portgas.”

In his pockets, Ace’s hands are clenched. He’s overflowing with fire that isn’t his and he’s still managing to be tired. Tired enough that he knows how tired Tashigi has to be too. Watching her drag herself to attention is pain he can feel in his own strained muscles.

So maybe that’s why he makes his hands go limp. Pulls them out and tips his hat down over his eyes. Thumbs his belt loops and opens his mouth. “You don’t have to use the badass commander voice on her. She’ll do whatever you want without it and you know it.”

Smoker leans in. His cigars are trumped by the smoke from the fire but Ace thinks he can tell the difference. “Trying to give me orders, Portgas?”

He drags the smirk out even though he’s not feeling it. “More like a suggestion.”

“Sounded like an order to me.”

This could go any number of different ways, most of them bad. He doesn’t _want_ the fight, exactly, but he’s pissed and Smoker is the biggest and best target for leagues around, one he knows will punch him back as hard as he gets punched.

Not flame and smoke. He wants to feel skin and bone connecting with more skin and bone. Smoker looks like he’s willing to let him try.

And he would have, is going to. Is starting to want to. And then Tashigi puts her hand on his chest and pushes him back. Steps between him and Smoker, sharing her frown between them.

“Ace-san, he’s right. It was irresponsible of me. Sir.” She steps back and bows. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Smoker’s expression is a strange mix of surprise and discomfort. He chews on his cigars. Starts to speak. Stops. Says, grudgingly, “I’ll send Kim to pick them up. Get finished up here.”

Her face relaxes into a smile. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He grunts something noncommittal. Looks almost relieved to abandon Tashigi as his victim in favor of Ace. “You didn’t make contact.”

It takes him a moment to figure that one out. “The meet up here?” He jerks his thumb at what's left of the inn. “That was half-assed from the start.”

“Wouldn’t have been if you’d followed through.”

Tashigi clears her throat. Loudly.

Smoker stops looming and starts chewing on his cigars again. Ace comes down off the balls of his feet and stuffs his hands back in his pockets. He’s damned if he’ll apologize first.

Finally Smoker says, “I’ll deal with it. Get that fire out and get back to the ship.” This time Ace doesn’t even try to call him back.

Tashigi is a warm, quiet presence beside him. “Ace-san.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. He looks down at her. “You okay?”

“Yes, of course.” Her smile is rare, bright enough to power an island, and tells him everything he needs to know.

She’s not freaked out. She’s okay. They’re okay.

Ace lets his breath go. Shuts his eyes briefly and when he opens them again Tashigi is looking at him strangely. Maybe he was wrong about the not being freaked out thing.

“Did I forget something? Shirt, shoes, necessary body parts?”

“Oh.” She shakes her head, and the line between her eyebrows eases. “No, it’s just. Where’s—?” She gestures vaguely towards his shoulder.

Fire flickers in the mirror of her glasses, at the corner of his eye. Ace glances at the inn—the roof is going. “Gone. I think… I don’t know. I’ll go back after we finish up here. Call her.”

Tashigi nods. She looks as ready to be shut of this evening and this island as he is. “Then let’s get it done.”

Ace gives her a half-assed salute, all he’s capable of at the moment. “Aye-aye, Ensign.” It’s not even a little funny. It still gets him half a smile. “Let’s do this,” he echoes, tipping his hat up.

Tashigi straightens her spine and her glasses. They walk back into the blaze together.

\--

He doesn’t make it back to the rice fields.

By the time they head for the ship it’s after dark. They’re dirty and tired and they walk through town like they walked toward the burning inn: together, shoulders and arms brushing occasionally, more for moral support than anything else.

Ace doesn’t think Tashigi is any more eager for another go-round with Smoker than he is, but he doesn’t see how they can avoid one. He half expects him to be waiting for them. When they reach the ship, though, Smoker is nowhere around. Instead shouts and screams and the smell of singed sisal meet them at the gangway.

“Ace-san!”

He follows Tashigi’s upward pointing finger with his eyes. The wyrum is tangled red and gold in the rigging, swaying gently up and down with the ship’s motion. She sees them and her head lifts, long tongue flickering out. Ace can hear the purring all the way down on the ground.

“We are in deep, deep shit,” he says. He starts to apologize for his language but Tashigi just shakes her head.

“Yes,” she says. “We are.”


End file.
